Sago

Sago (/ˈseɪɡoʊ/) is a starch extracted from the pith, or spongy core tissue, of various tropical palm stems, especially those of Metroxylon sagu.

[1] It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands, where it is called saksak, rabia and sagu.

Sago is often produced commercially in the form of "pearls" (small rounded starch aggregates, partly gelatinized by heating).

In his Zhu Fan Zhi (1225), a collection of descriptions of foreign countries, he writes that the kingdom of Boni "produces no wheat, but hemp and rice, and they use sha-hu (sago) for grain".

Sago palms grow very quickly, in clumps of different ages similar to bananas, one sucker matures, then flowers and dies.

Sago palms are harvested at the age of 7–15 years, just before or shortly after the inflorescence appears and when the stems are full of starch stored for use in reproduction.

Consumption of cycad seeds has been implicated in the outbreak of Parkinson's disease-like neurological disorder in Guam and other locations in the Pacific.

In many countries including Australia,[11] Brazil,[12] and India, tapioca pearls made from cassava root[13] are also referred to as sago, sagu, sabudana, etc.

Sago starch can be baked (resulting in a product analogous to bread, pancake, or biscuit) or mixed with boiling water to form a paste.

It is a main staple of many traditional communities in New Guinea and Maluku in the form of papeda, Borneo, South Sulawesi (most known in Luwu Regency) and Sumatra.

In 1805, two captured crew members of the shipwrecked schooner Betsey were kept alive until their escape from an undetermined island on a diet of sago.

Both may be white (if very pure) or colored naturally gray, brown or black, or artificially pink, yellow, green, etc.

Most of the natural based cloth and clothing has been sized; this leaves a residue which is removed in the first wash. Because many traditional people rely on sago-palm as their main food staple and because supplies are finite, in some areas commercial or industrial harvesting of wild stands of sago-palm can conflict with the food needs of local communities.

There is also a research conducted to potentially make use of the waste from sago palm industry as an adsorbent for cleaning up oil spills.