Protection of Conventional Food Crop Chains

The development of crops with modified fatty-acid profiles, developed through conventional breeding programmes, for example high erucic acid crops, also pose a risk to food crop chains. As such there is a requirement to ensure there is little or no risk of cross-fertilisation and intermixing with conventional cultivars, and to ensure identity preservation and separation of crop produce. Such systems have been running effectively for decades. 

Dealing with such problems and adopting methodologies to reduce any risk of crop contamination places additional labour, infrastructure and financial burdens on growers. To address such concerns it has been proposed that non-food crop plants unrelated to current food crops and native flora (to avoid risk of crosspollination) should be used as potential hosts for engineered industrial use traits. Crambe, (Crambe abyssinica) has been identified as a suitable model oil crop plant (EPOBIO 2007). Crambe is a plant that has already been commercialised on a relatively small scale to exploit its high erucic acid content. Elsewhere, safflower has been proposed as a potential candidate, as well as the use of algae, moss and the aquatic plant duck weed in contained bioreactor systems. 

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