Corn oil an untapped potential

Only five percent of maize or corn produced in the country are used for human consumption while the rest, a staggering 95 percent, is used as feed for poultry, fish and dairy farms.

But before corn is used as animal feed, a good amount of edible oil for human consumption can be extracted from the seed, said scientists at Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI) in Dinajpur.

Furthermore, the extraction of oil from the corn seeds would not have any negative impact on the animal feed industry as nutritional value or quantity of the seeds remain about the same in the form of slag, they also said.

The country has an annual demand for 17 lakh tonnes of edible oil and more than 1 lakh tonne of the demand could be met with corn oil from 47 lakh metric tonnes of corn produced in the country over the same period, according to BWMRI.

Out of the total corn production, 85 percent is used in poultry industry while 10 percent is used in fish industry.

Dr Israil Hossain, director general (DG) of BWMRI, said they have been encouraging oil machinery manufacturing companies from overseas to visit the country and examine the feasibility of setting up factories in the country to produce corn oil.

"If everything goes well, we expect that experts from the companies will visit Bangladesh [soon]."

About 5.05 lakh hectares of land is used to produce corn in the country and 18 lakh tonnes of it is imported to meet the annual demand of 65 lakh tonnes, the DG added.

While speaking with this paper at BWMRI rest house in Dinajpur, eminent agricultural scientist Dr Kazi M Badruddoza said production of corn oil has good potential in Bangladesh and the government should facilitate different sectors that can exploit the potential by setting up corn oil factories in the country. 

Although corn has high nutritional value, it is still being used as animal and fish feed in the country. "The worrying thing is that only five percent of the total corn production is used in the country for human consumption," he said.

Corn oil contains healthy components such as vitamin E and it is produced in a number of countries including USA, Argentina, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, China and India.