The Chronicles of Oil and Meal Quality Improvement in Oilseed Rape

Almost all plant parts of rapeseed are used in a range of human livelihood activities: seeds for edible oil, the leaf as vegetable and animal fodder, the oilseed cake as high value animal feed and the dried stalk as domestic fuel. The nutritional quality of the two economically important products, that is oil and cake, is of prime importance due to its direct and indirect impact on human health. Brassica oil especially that of oilseed rape (Brassica napus) is nutritionally superior to most of the other edible oils due to the lowest amounts of harmful saturated fatty acids (SFAs) and a good proportion of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids (FAs). In addition, it is also a source of the two essential FAs, linoleic and linolenic, that are not present in some of the other edible oils. The meal is a rich source of good-quality proteins as well; however, the value of the conventional oil and meal from varieties being grown in India or other Asian countries gets restricted at the global level due to the presence of higher amounts of a long carbon chain unsaturated FA (erucic acid) in the seed oil and sulphur-containing compounds (glucosinolates) in the meal, both of which are undesired. This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of nutritional implications of oil and meal quality of rapeseed, inheritance of the chief biochemical determinants, the analytical techniques for estimation of nutritional quality parameters and the breeding efforts towards attaining desired nutritional quality in globally prominent rapeseed species with specific relevance to the Indian perspective.