Mustards fatty acid compositions

Canadian investigators have bred Brassica juncea (orienal mustard) from an Australian line with low erucic acid and low glucosinolate so that it has a fatty acid composition (palmitic 3%, stearic 2%, oleic 64%, linoleic 17%, and linolenic acid 10%) similar to that of canola oil from B. napus and B. rapa. This makes it possible to expand the canola growing area of Western Canada (143). 

HEAR and LEAR oils contain brassicasterol, a C28 sterol (Fig. 3) characteristic of Brassica oils. It does not occur in other common edible vegetable oils (Table XII) except for mustard oil. Brassicasterol is, thus, a key factor in identifying Brassica oils either by themselves or after blending with other edible oils, since fatty acid compositions cover a range for each oil due to cultivar, climate, or maturity, and overlaps in physical properties are common (Spencer et al., 1976). Among recent authors examining this question... 

The success of plant breeders to develop rapeseed cultivars practically devoid of erucic acid stands out as an accomplishment to the potential of genetic manipulation in plants to remove chemical constituents (see Chapter 6). The oil from these new cultivars of rapeseed has an entirely different fatty acid composition compared to the older cultivars of rapeseed, and hence by right should be considered as a new vegetable oil. For example, a typical Canadian and European high erucic acid rapeseed (FHEAR) oil, like mustard oil, is rich in erucic (22 1 n-9) and gandoic (20 1 n-9) acids, while the new low erucic acid rapeseed (LEAR) oil is rich in oleic acid (18 1 n-9) (Table I). The fatty acid composition of LEAR oil resembles that of peanut and olive oil except for linolenic acid (18 3 n-3), which is found in soybean oil at a similar level. 

L. Velasco, J. M. Fernandez-Martinez, A. DeHaro. Determination of the fatty acid composition of the oil in intact-seed mustard by near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy. JAm Oil Chem Soc 74 1595-1602, 1997. 

Fatty Acid Compositions of Various Mustard Oils... 

Basu, A.K., Ghosh, A. and Dutta S. 1973. Fatty acid composition of mustard (Brassica nigra) seed oil by gas-liquid chromatography. J. Chromatog. 86 232-233. 

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