Modification of Fatty Acid Profiles of Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) Oil for Using as Food, Industrial Feed-Stock and Biodiesel

Rapeseed is a member of family Brassicaceae, cultivated as oil crop. Rapeseed oil is being utilized from early civilization, but its popularity being declined from the mid-nineteenth century due to presence of erucic acid (C22:1) and glucosinolates. Thereby, several attempts have been made to develop cultivars free from those toxins. In the past 20 years, breeders got success in developing ‘00’- quality rapeseed, known as ‘Canola’. The target mutagenesis of fae-1 and fae-2 of Brassica napus ensured such success. Thereafter, ‘canola’ regains its market as a healthy vegetable oil. Moreover, high oleic acid rapeseed lines, with 86% oleic acid, have been developed by using chemical mutagenesis of FAD2 alleles responsible for desaturation of oleic acid (C18:1) to linoleic acid (C18:2). Recently, high erucic acid rapeseed oil regained interest for biodegradable plastic, cosmetic, emollient industries and for biodiesel. Therefore, breeding approaches have been pursued; unfortunately, that were failed to reach erucic acid level beyond 50% in seed-oil. Rapeseed genotypes over-expressed with Ld-LPAAT separately and Ld-LPAAT-FAE chimaric construct together were tried but failed to reach the erucic acid content more than 60%. Thereof, combined effort of conventional breeding and transgenic approaches are brought together to overcome three hypothesized bottlenecks; reviewed in this article, which restricted erucic acid level near to 60%. Finally, rapeseed genotypes with 78% erucic acid were developed successfully. This material is now available in Germany for using in emollient industries and for biodiesel. Therefore, this article is reviewed on the current status and future outlook for modification of fatty acid profiles of rapeseed oil for its end-use as food, industrial feed-stock and biodiesel.