Achievement

Vegetable oils are composed of multiple lipids which presents an opportunity to recover high value fatty acids from the complex oil structure. Separation of lipids for pharmaceutical, bio-plastic, and nutritional applications leaves the remaining lipids within an oil profile as a co-product for biodiesel production. In this study, IGERT trainees evaluated the agronomic productivity of soybean, sunflower, camelina, and canola and then extracted oils from these field-produced seeds and completed lipid analysis on the samples. Camelina demonstrated the most desirable lipid profile with the highest concentrations of C20:1 and C18:3 and the presence of polyunsaturated lipids of C20 and longer. Soybean had the highest concentration of C16:0 and C18:2 lipids. Sunflower had the highest concentration of C18:1 lipid. This work has resulted in one book chapter and two presentations authored by IGERT trainees and mentors with several other publications in preparation.