Miss. Snehal Keshavrao Tambakhesnehal.tambakhe@gmail.com

Introduction

More recently, plant breeders used crossing and selection techniques to enhance yields, oil contents, and climate adaptation, as well as to affect changes in oil quality, composition, and resistance to pests or pesticides.

Genetic modification implies transfer of a gene from one species to another (transgenic). The drivers for these seed modification are nutrition, functionality and agronomics.

Genetic varieties have been developed to modify the fatty acid profile of oil seed to create new value-added oils.

Introduction of high-oleic safflower in 1964 and low-erucic acid rapeseed oil, which became known as canola oil in 1978, are examples of successful fatty acid composition modifications using this technology.

Canola oilRapeseed is an important food crop, a fact that was made possible

through modern plant breeding. Around 1960, researchers started developing new rapeseed cultivers that enabled the crop’s rapid growth in recent years.These improved rapeseed cultivars were free of erucic acid and glucosinolates. Erucic acid tastes bitter and had prevented the use of rapeseed oil in food. Gluconsinolates, which were found in rapeseed meal leftover from pressing, are toxic and had prevented the use of the meal in animal feed. These new cultivars are known as "double-zero" rapeseed. In Canada, where "double-zero" rapeseed was developed, the crop was renamed "canola" (Canadian oil) to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed.

Canola is the registered trademark of the Canola Council of Canada for the genetically modified seed, oil, and meal derived from rapeseed cultivars, Brassica napus and B. campestris. Another product, known as LEAR (low erucic acid rape-seed), was derived from the cross-breeding of Brassica juncea and is also referred to as canola oil (CO)

Referred to as the healthiest cooking oil available on the market by its makers, canola oil is low in saturated fat, high in monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA), and polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) like omega-3 fatty acids. The oil is produced from pressed canola seed, which are harvested from pods obtained from the canola plant.

Although they look the same on the outside, canola is actually not rapeseed. Canola was not developed using biotechnology, but much of it grown in the United States and Canada today has been genetically modified to make it to tolerant to some herbicides.

Composition of Canola Oil

Canola oil is praised by the mainstream food industry due to its fatty acid content:

Saturated fat – Canola oil contains about seven percent – half the amount found in corn oil, olive oil, and soybean oil.

Monounsaturated fatty acids – This is the most abundant fat in canola oil. The MUFA oleic acid makes up 61 percent of canola oil.

Polyunsaturated fatty acid – Compared to palm oil and olive oil, canola oil has a higher amount of PUFA. It has a ratio of omega-6 fat (linoleic acid) and omega-3 fat (alpha-linolenic acid) of 2:1.

Genetically Modified Oil

The genetic modification efforts focused on improved canola hybrids. Theagronomic goals to increase field yields; improve frost resistance; increase oil andmeal contents; and improve disease, insect, and herbicide resistance were met, inmost cases, by using genetic engineering technology.

The programs to further modify the fatty acid profiles have also achievedtheir goals. Oilseed modifications to reduce saturates and linolenic, increase oleicor saturates, and to develope a canola variety with a high lauric fatty acid content haveall been developed.

Low in erucic acid and glucosinolates, are very different from high erucic acidrapeseed oil in chemical, physical and nutritional properties.

The characteristics of canola include

Higher yield with < 2% erucic acid

Relatively shorter duration of the crop

Perceived as a healthy cooking medium having less than 2 per cent erucic acid.

Demand as livestock feed as oil meal contains less than 30 micromoles glucosinolates per gram of defatted meal

Genetically Modified Canola oil

Physical properties and Composition

S – saturated U- unsaturated

Canola oil processing

Harvest seeds

Pressing

Pressing

Crude vegetable oils

By-product (meal used for stock feed)

Oil extraction

Blending

Colour removal

Odour removal

Refined edible oils Bottled oils

Oil Refining

Spreads production

Applications of Canola Oil

Canola oil is a common ingredient in food products, such as mayonnaise, salad dressings, and margarine.

Used as salad oil for it’s light colour and texture

Plant-sourced oils like canola oil, once processed, can also be used industrially to formulate lubricants, oils, fuels, soaps, paints, plastics, cosmetics, and ink.

Canola and wheat are also used for the production of ethanol, a component of gasohol (gasoline and ethanol).

Canola seeds can also be used as biodiesel.

Used in baking industry (reduces the saturated fatty acid intake, modifies the texture of baked product by making it more moist and softer)

Some reports show that canola oil, along with soybean oil, is used as active ingredients in pesticide products due to their high effectiveness in eliminating insects.

Some of the key factors that drive up the costs for these modified oils are

Lack of competitive field yields : Most modified oilseeds provide only about 85 to 95% of the yield potential of the regular oilseed variety.

Identity preservation systems : Separate handling systems are required at every stage, including seed handling, planting, growing, harvesting, transportation, storage, extraction, and final processing.

Low trait stability : Environmental effects have caused inconsistent oil compositions in modified oilseed products.