Combination of modern plant breeding and enzyme technology to obtain highly enriched erucic acid from Crambe oil

Abstract

Background Fatty acids from vegetable oils are useful building blocks for industrial materials. The purpose of this work was to prepare erucic acid with high purity from a vegetable oil. High purity erucic acid is used for the production of erucamide with applications in plastics manufacturing. A newly developed transgenic Crambe line produces seed oil with 68% erucic acid compared to 53% in the wild type oil. Results Further enrichment of erucic acid from Crambe (wild type and transgenic) oil was achieved by selective enzymatic hydrolysis. UsingCandida rugosalipase as catalyst, other fatty acids were preferentially hydrolysed from the triacylglycerols and erucic acid was enriched in the acylglycerol fraction. The highest content of erucic acid achieved in that fraction was 95%. Conclusions The combination of modern plant breeding and enzyme technology is a promising approach for preparation of fatty acids of high purity.

Published in

Sustainable Chemical Processes
2016, Volume: 4, number: 1, article number: 1

SLU Authors

• Li, Xue-Yuan

  • Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Zhu, Li-Hua

  • Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Plant Biotechnology
Chemical Process Engineering


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40508-016-0045-x

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/73037