PALM OIL will be the cooking medium of the future in India, if the Regional Research Laboratory at Thiruvananthapuram is to be taken seriously. It has developed a machine which can process 1,000 kg of palm fruit per hour. The process technology covers fruit harvesting, stripping, oil extraction and purification. To feed such machines, agricultural scientists have identified 500,000 ha of land in three states which can be put under palm cultivation. The bonus is that palm oil extracted from a certain species of the plant is extremely rich in Vitamin A.