Elsevier

Current Opinion in Plant Biology

Volume 56, August 2020, Pages 181-189
Current Opinion in Plant Biology

Oil crops for the future

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbi.2019.12.003Get rights and content

Agriculture faces enormous challenges including the need to substantially increase productivity, reduce environmental footprint, and deliver renewable alternatives that are being addressed by developing new oil crops for the future. The efforts include domestication of Lepidium spp. using genomics-aided breeding as a cold hardy perennial high-yielding oil crop that provides substantial environmental benefits, expands the geography for oil crops, and improves farmers’ economy. In addition, genetic engineering in Crambe abyssinica may lead to a dedicated industrial oil crop to replace fossil oil. Redirection of photosynthates from starch to oil in plant tubers and cereal endosperm also provides a path for enhancing oil production to meet the growing demands for food, fuel, and biomaterials. Insect pheromone components are produced in seed oil plants in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly pest management replacing synthetically produced pheromones. Autophagy is explored for increasing crop fitness and oil accumulation using genetic engineering in Arabidopsis.

Introduction

The World faces enormous challenges such as increasing productivity while lowering environmental footprints, coping with climate change, and providing renewable alternatives to fossil oil. The potential for plant oils to replace fossil oil is immense due to similarities in chemical structures. Nevertheless, there should be an economic advantage to use plant oil instead of fossil oil and sufficient quantity available to realize their full potential. Plant materials optimized in their molecular structures may replace the fossil material in the product and save energy plus processing costs. Crossbreeding facilitated by genomics and genetic engineering may lead to new oil crops that may replace fossil oils in a changing world.

This article shows how modern breeding methods (including latest molecular tools) and directed basic research may enhance the production of plant oils, lower production costs and environmental footprints, and optimize the oil quality for various non-food uses. Previous research in the area has led to the development of many new oil qualities [1]. Examples of genetic engineered oil crops with altered oil quality that have very recently been deregulated for commercial production are the super high oleic acid safflower [2••] and rape seed with ‘fish’ fatty acids (very long-chain omega-3 fatty acids) [3••]. The safflower oil could be used for many industrial applications due its extreme oxidation stability and unprecedented high oleic acid content and the rape seed oil to replace fish oil in feed for farmed fishes.

Our review highlights our efforts to domesticate the wild plant Lepidium spp. as a cold hardy, perennial high-yielding oil crop and develop added-value oils in Crambe spp. — a dedicated industrial oil crop, to replace fossil oil in the chemical industry. We also describe how photosynthates can be re-directed from starch to oil in tubers and endosperm — thus providing methods to increase plant oil production. We further describe metabolic engineering efforts that enable production of insect pheromone precursors in seed oil to replace today’s synthetic production of pheromones forecast-effective and environmentally friendly pest management. Moreover, we provide insights on the function of autophagy in crop fitness and oil accumulation.

Section snippets

Domestication and breeding of Lepidium as perennial oil crop

Many agricultural production systems involve annual crop sowing and tilling, and are energy inefficient and allow pollution of the aquatic environment due to nutrient leaching from agricultural fields. Comparatively, perennial seed crops provide better ecosystem services through higher energy use efficiency, carbon storage and better soil and water management [4,5,6]. Similarly, biennial crops outperform annual crops in providing ecosystem services. Hence, Lepidium campestre (field cress;

Developing Crambe as an industrial oil crop platform

C. abyssinica is an oil crop with high levels (55–60%) of erucic acid (22:1) in its seed oil. Crambe has been proposed as an ideal crop for producing oil qualities intended for industrial purposes [14,15] and is currently developed for several purposes, for example, increased 22:1-content and production of a novel wax containing oil [16]. Erucic acid is an added-value fatty acid, and its derivative erucamide is widely used in the plastic industry [17]. Oil (triacylglycerol, TAG) consists of a

Modifying carbon allocation in cereals and tuber crops

Cereal, root and tuber crops are generally rich in carbohydrates with typically very little fat. Breeding crop representatives into yielding oil could be of interest from two perspectives, namely, (i) increasing the diversity of crops for vegetable oil, and (ii) improving the nutritional balance of carbohydrate rich crops. Uniquely among cereals and tuber bearing plants, oat (Avena sativa) and yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) can produce appreciable amounts of oil in their endosperm (up to

Biopesticides: production of pheromones in plants

The larvae of many Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) are major pests in agriculture, forestry and on stored products. Mate finding and reproduction in moths relies on female-produced sex pheromones attracting male moths from a distance [33]. The need for insect pheromones for pest control is increasing, as pheromones provide a very specific and environmentally benign form of insect pest management. Although synthetic insect pheromones can be produced in large volumes and used for mating

More oil through manipulation of autophagy

The intracellular storage and use of lipids are crucial for maintaining energy balance. When the balance becomes compromised by stress, starvation or developmental transition, a eukaryotic cell activates countermeasure mechanisms, among which autophagy (from Greek ‘eat oneself’) is considered to be especially important. During autophagy, a bulk cytoplasm or select cellular components, for example, a certain type of organelles or proteins, are engulfed by double-membrane vesicles and delivered

Conclusions

The above research highlights involved multiple strategies using modern breeding and biotechnological methods to meet the growing needs of consumers and industry for vegetable oils, including those comprised fatty acid structures for high-value applications. These efforts also have broader societal significance. For example, developing L. campestre as a perennial crop will lead to increased farmer profitability in regions such as northern Scandinavia that have limited crop alternatives due to

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

  • •• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

We apologize to colleagues whose work has not been cited due to space limitation. This work was financed by grants from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA) and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

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