Five cDNA clones encoding the oil palm acyl carrier protein (ACP) were IV isolated and characterized. Four of the clones, pACP1, pACP3, pACP4 and pACP9, were completely sequenced and the sizes of inserts shown to be 529, 701, 505 and 370bp, respectively. The clones could be divided into two classes, which probably represent two different isoforms of ACP. pACPI, which was classed separately from the others, is about 92% identical to the other three clones. The clones also had a high similarity to ACPs in other plants – 73%, 72% and 70% identical to barley ACPI, castor bean ACP and barley ACPIII, respectively. The similarity of the transit peptide was lower at about 45% to 52%. Based on the comparison, we predict that pACP3 contains the full length insert of oil palm ACP with an open reading frame of 432bp which starts at nucleotide 47 from the 5′ end and ends at nucleotide 478. This comprises 144 amino acid residues including 65 residues of a transit peptide.