Oil palm is a perennial monocotyledonous plant and a tropical woody oil crop. The plant is tall, fibrous roots, upright stems, unbranched and cylindrical. The leaves are pinnately divided, simple leaves, spikes (panicles), monoecious, and the fruit is drupe. The pulp and nuts of oil palm are rich in oil, which is known as the "world oil king" in various oil crops. The oil extracted from palm kernel is called palm oil.

China introduced it from 1926, and the planting area reached 650,000 mu in 1960s. Due to subjective and objective reasons such as variety, technology and management, commercial production and scientific research stopped in the early 1980s.

1998 With the support of the "948" project of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Rubber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (Office of the National Leading Group for Regional Adaptability Test of Oil Palm Varieties) launched a new round of introduction and trial planting of oil palm in China (12 new oil palm varieties). After 10 years of trial planting performance, hot oil No.2, hot oil No.4 and hot oil No.6 were preliminarily screened out.