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Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is a major concern of oil palm mill because it contributes to numerous pollution such as soil, water and air pollution. In order to maintain a clean environment for a sustainable agricultural system in oil palm plantation, the quality of POME and its level must be monitored to ensure that the requirement set by the country is met. Hence, this paper is written based on the data of POME final discharge into waterways taken from Malaysian Department of Environment in four regions of Perak, Malaysia. The data is compared between regions and relatively different levels of discharge have been produced. Some of the mills produce final POME wastewater above the limit that has been set. The remaining mills discharge the wastewater below the maximum allowed level. This is an indicator that each mill has its own Standard of Procedures in treating POME before being discharged into waterways. It is suggested that the mills take a proactive approach to treat POME beyond the ponding system. POME can be physically processed to produce biofertilizer and biocompost for organic farming. The mills apply phytoremediation techniques in treating POME to reduce the unwanted variables that can affect the sustainability of our environment.

ABSTRACT:, A new machine system has been designed, developed and evaluated for extensive circle spraying of oil palms (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) in an effort to overcome the inefficient spraying problem with the conventional spraying system. The machine system consists of a four-wheeled drive 4WD prime mover with front mounted machine attachments for the circle spraying operation.The configuration of the circle spraying attachment consists of a hexagonal curved spray boom, lifting arm, opening-tilting mechanism unit, storage tank, spray pump, solid cone nozzles, and associate hydraulic system. Field performance tests on the machine system showed an average effective field capacity of 7.89 ha per man per day and when compared to the earlier reported effective field capacity of the walking spray-operated equipment using Serena LT16 knapsack sprayer; a difference of 1.97 time for circle spraying of mature palms grove. Reduction in the human energy expenditure of 101.28 kJ man -1 h -1 or 10.68 % but an increase in the spraying cost of 1.53 USD ha -1 or 24.9 % were obtained with the machine system against the walking spraying-operated equipment using Serena LT16 knapsack sprayer. Justification for machine system to be cost effective could be satisfied if the present effective field capacity is increased to 1.263 time with good skilled operator or if the current R&D cost is reduced to 0.41 time. This is because the improved field capacity of new machine system could not rationalize its current R&D cost. Admittedly, the machine system has great potential to overcome the limitations with the current employed machine/ equipment in the circle spraying operation of oil palms in the plantation.

The autopilot-automated steering system is one of today’s modern technologies in a tractor’s driving system for conducting the operations in farmland. However, further study on the suitability of this steering technology on a particular geographic region is still a necessity. This study evaluated the precision of tractor operations with soil sensor implement using manual and autopilot-automated steering systems on oil palm plantation terrain in Malaysia. A New Holland TD5.75 tractor with 75 hp engine size equipped with a Trimble autopilot-automated steering system pulling a Veris 3100 soil electrical conductivity (EC) sensor was tested in this study. The findings showed that each steering system generated a little different pattern of spatial variability in interpolated soil EC maps. Apart from that, autopilot-automated steering system offered better performances by saving energy expenditure of operator and improving the field capacity of operation. Conclusively, tractor with autopilot-automated steering presented a great suitability for the use in agricultural operations in Malaysia.