Abstract
Rapeseed(Brassica napus L.) is an important oil crop as a vegetable oil, concentrated feed and industrial materials. The name "canola" was registered in 1979 by the Western Canadian Oilseed Crushers Association to describe "double-low" varieties. Double low indicates that the processed oil contains less than 2% erucic-acid and the meal less than 3mg/g of glucosinolates. Today annual worldwide production of rapeseed is approximately 35 million tons on 24 million hectares. China accounts for 33% of the world production and the European Economic Community for nearly 32%. Canola ranks 3rd in production among the world's oilseed crops following soybeans, sunflowers, peanuts and cottonseed. The recent advances in genomics and in gene function studies has allowed us to understand the detailed genetic basis of many complex traits, such as flowering time, height, and disease resistance. The manipulation of seed oil content via transgene insertion has been one of the earliest successful applications of modern biotechnology in agriculture. For example, the first transgenic crop with a modified seed composition to be approved for unrestricted commercial cultivation in the US was a lauric oil, rape-seed, grown in 1995. There were also some significant early successes, mostly notably the achievement of 40% to 60% lauric acid content in rapeseed oil, which normally accumulates little or no lauric acid. The name "$\textrm{Laurical}^{TM}$" was registered in 1995 by Calgene Inc. Nevertheless, attempts to achieve high levels of other novel fatty acids in seed oils have met with much less success and there have been several reports that the presence of novel fatty acids in transgenic plants can sometimes lead to the induction of catabolic pathways which break down the novel fatty acid, i.e. the plant recognizes the "strange" fatty acid and, far from tolerating it, may even actively eliminate it from the seed oil. It is likely that, in the future, transgenic oil crops and newly domesticated oil crops will both be developed in order to provide the increased amount and diversity of oils which will be required for both edible and industrial use. It is important that we recognize that both approaches have both positive and negative points. It will be a combination of these two strategies that is most likely to supply the increasing demands for plant oils in the 21st century and beyond.ant oils in the 21st century and beyond.
