Review Corojo palm, a natural resource for sustainable oil production

Abstract

The worldwide demand for the use of vegetable oils is increasing, due to their extensive use, ranging from satisfy growing nutritional needs of the population, until the industrial production of soaps and cosmetics and the use in the recent years as lubricants and biodiesel as renewable source of energy. The actual tendency in many countries to oil production is the use of new sources, such as the palms. In Cuba there are many oil producing species of oleaginous palms including those know as the “corojo palm” including the remarkable Acrocomia aculeata (Jacq.) Lodd. ex Mart, which is native and grows spontaneously in most of the provinces, mainly in the central and eastern region of the country, being located according to the international bibliography as the second among the group of oil producing species with an estimated 4200 L ha-1. In the present work, different aspects about palms are discussed and specifically about this specie and the researches that have been done in different countries of Latin America and particularly in Cuba, where it only has been exploited in an extractivist method for self-consumption by the population of different territories where it grows naturally.