Determining the sugar content of Oil palm frond (OPF) juice

The prospect of oil palm frond (OPF) juice as an improved ruminant feedstuff was investigated by determining its sugar content which are glucose, sucrose and fructose. The whole OPF and petiole were collected at Agropark, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Jeli campus. Extraction of the OPF juice were done using physical pre- treatment which was pressing method by sugarcane machine. The recovery yield of OPF juice from fresh whole OPF was 16.0425±1.39 g/l. Comparison of different injection volume on optimizing the sugar standard High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) using UV detector was done. The result showed that the higher the injection volume used in the optimizing standard, the more component
component detect by HPLC. Sugar contents of OPF juice was also determined by HPLC using Refractive Index detector: 3.9 g/100g of glucose, 0.0 g/100g for sucrose and 0.6 g/100g for fructose. The result showed the different tree has different recovery yield. It is because of a weather condition can be reduces due to free sugar degradation by microorganisms and also reduced moisture content. As a conclusion, OPF can be used as ruminant feedstuff as it is high in simple sugar content following physical pre-treatment.