Plantation road construction is an important part that requires a serious planning. Any negligence in constructing and maintaining the roads will affect the infield transportation time of the harvested agricultural products as well as the process of bringing out the agricultural products to the needs. Moreover, weather conditions will make the roads impassable and create poor road surfaces which cause damage to the vehicles. Hence, without regular maintenance and resurfacing, these roads will have limited useful lives. This paper has done the laboratory work to evaluate the unconfined compressive strength of oil palm soil by using the FJ-Adtech additive stabilisers as an enhancing medium. Lahad Datu plantation soils were mixed well with additive loadings of 14 wt. % up to 20 wt. % and being pressed at 100 kPa in compacted form sample with the size of 100 mm (height) x 50 mm (diameter). The results showed that the FJ-Ad treatment effectively improved the strength characteristics of Lahad Datu soil (4311 kPa) at 20 wt. % of loading percentage compared to the untreatment soil (1382 kPa). Field work observation also showed that the road construction surfaces treated with the stabiliser formulation showed less maintenance as 6% to 7 % cheaper compared to the conventional method. Therefore, this additive stabiliser is suitable to be used as soil treatment in the formulation for making the road surfaces more durable, less permeable and less compressed than the native soil.

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Effects of design parameters (magnetic driving force (M), cutting angle (S) and frond moisture content  (MC) on the specific cutting force (SCF) and specific cutting energy (SCE) for cutting oil palm fronds are investigated. Two types of linear magnetic actuators (500 N and 750 N) and three cutting angles (30o, 45o, and 60o) were tested on two levels of frond moisture content (<50% and >50% moisture content). Experiments conducted revealed that cutting angle and frond moisture content have a significant effect on SCF and SCE, but not the magnetic force. The minimum values of SCF and SCE were 0.3866N/cm2 and 2.0459N/cm, respectively (cutting angle of 45o, moisture content >50%), while the maximum values of SCF and SCE were 2.9432 N/cm2 and 4.1219 N/cm, respectively (cutting angle of 60o and moisture content <50%). The study also revealed that cutting drier fronds (low moisture content) increased the SCF and SCE significantly. A prototype of an oil palm magnetic cutter was developed. Functional tests carried out showed its cutting performance was 254-frond/hour, proving that magnetic force was capable to be used as cutter’s actuator.

The innovation for the recent agriculture tractors have been widely developed. These tractors are used to enhance the harvesting activities in way to lowering the labour cost. However, the current system of infield collection of oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFB) by using mini-tractor-trailer (MTT) has its limitation. This MTT have poor traction on soft ground such as coastal and peat areas which give the limiting factors that prohibit the usage of any mini-tractor. Thus, the aim of this project is to fabricate a functioning prototype vehicle consist of two-wheel steering (2WS) and four-wheel steering (4WS) in measuring its performance of tractive effort and steering radius for usage in palm plantation. The machine configuration consists of main chassis, compartment to carry oil palm bunches, a mechanism for loading purposes, operator cabin, and associated hydraulic system. The laboratory test of performance evaluation were conducted to the developed vehicle. The results show that under 4WD mode, the turning radius of the vehicle was found to be 42.9% lesser if the 4WS mode is engaged. For 6WD with 4WS active, the turning radius was 46% lesser while turning for 42.2% lesser compared to 2WS. The slippage ranges are recorded between 8.5% to 22.5% where the slippage for the left wheel is negative as the left wheel rotates slower than the right wheel on the left turning of circular motion and vice versa. In addition, the vehicle design could be considered optimum as the measured tractive effort of the vehicle was found to be 32% of the vehicle gross weight. This is within the recommended tractive effort which is within a range of 30% to 36% of the suggested vehicle gross weight.

Oil palm plantations produce fresh fruit bunches (FFB) as their primary output. Over the years, several technologies for cutting oil palm fronds and FFB have been developed and only a few of these technologies have been taken up by the industry. A study to explore the potential of fibre lasers as an alternative technology to cut oil palm fronds has been initiated where in this study laser cutting parameters using a 250 mm focus lens by manipulating power, speed and frequency are being optimised. The pulse fibre laser system used in this work operates at the wavelength and power of 1064 nm and 50 kW respectively where it is equivalent to 2 mJ of energy. Characterising and optimising the laser system with the 250 mm lens, an optimisation study is conducted in order to find a suitable working range for the fibre pulsed laser system to perform oil palm frond cutting. This study concludes that all three parameters; frequency, power and speed play huge roles in determining the quality and efficiency of the laser cutting. High frequency and speed with power above 80 % and 1 mm-1 will yield the desired results.