Palm Fruit “Phlae thnaot” is the fruit of a certain kind of palm tree in Cambodia. It is delicious as it is, but the Khmers like to make Juice “teuk thnaot” out of it, which is a sour alcoholic drink about as strong as a regular beer. And it’s so delicious.
Palm tree is one of symbols of Cambodia, this tree also the long life tree in Cambodia that we can see it everywhere in Cambodia (Kingdom of Wonder). It has many advantages: their leaves and branches are used to mate roof, Palm fruit can make sweet or cooking for food, palm juice for vinegar, wine and palm sugar, their root use for traditional medicine.
One more thing is: the most useful for people is their trunk, people take their trunk for boat to transport. In addition, rural area people at countryside are get revenue from this tree to support their daily life. Some people sell palm juice, sell palm sugar and palm wine in their business.
The sugar palm tree - Borassus flabellifer ('skor t'not') is one of Cambodia's national icons. It is found throughout Cambodia and plays a very important role in providing a source of revenue for many Khmer as well as providing material for many home uses.
It is a multi-purpose tree every part of the tree is used for something and often parts have many uses. Khmer use the timber for construction: houses, boats - dug out canoes, cooking and eating implements: chopsticks, spoons, forks, bowls, cups and plates, the leaves are used for many purposes: thatch for roof and walls, mats, baskets, fans and hats, branches are used for fencing and to make thongs/flip flops and juice and fruit are harvested and eaten and used for many things. Indeed the sharp edges of the fronds were also used by the Khmer Rouge to cut the throats of other Khmer.
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After evaporation, the palm sap is transformed to palm sugar which is also popular beside our traditional fermented fishes (Prahoc and Pa-ork) and fermented cucumber (Trasak Chav). Along with rice, these products are basic in the Khmer gastronomy. Aside palm sugar (Skor Tnot), people do natural fermentation to produce acid palm juice or palm vine (Teuk Tnot Chou) and palm vinegar (Teuk Khmes Tnot). These products are very popular at countryside but difficult to penetrate into urban market.
Despite of these potentials, rural farmers have also long been facing many constraints such as: Palm tree is not industrial plant, Difficult harvesting, High sensitivity of palm sap to rapid fermentation by wild strains, Limited means of processing and product quality standard, Energy cost, Huge importation and unfair competition, Lack of coordination between producers, Limited information about technique and marketing, Lack of advanced scientific research on palm tree and more. The tree of the poor villagers as palm trees grow in rural parts of Cambodia.
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