Euro Fed Lipid
Divisions: Plant Lipids
Plant lipids
constitute an important group of biomolecules, since are
the major building blocks in cell membranes and serve as energy reserve
of the
cell. Because of these properties they are of considerable interest in
economic
sectors such as agriculture, food, health and the cosmetics industry.
In
addition, the sector of renewable energies is showing increasing
interest in
the field of plant lipids.
The lipids
of plants constitute the majority of the reserves of seeds
from field crops like: soya, rape, sunflower, palm tree, and olive
tree. Annual
world production attains 120 million tons and represents a sales
turnover of 8
billion euro. In 2005, these crops represented approximately 7 million
cultivated hectares in the EEC (data from FranceAgriMer,
Céréales/Numéro
2 / décembre 2009). To that we can add the surface
occupied by olive tree fields in the Mediterranean region, whose
production
reaches 1.8 million tons.
The oils
extracted from these seeds have different properties according
to their composition in lipids and fatty acids. Their uses will be
varied
according to their properties. They are destined to both food and
non-food
uses. The improvement of their properties and their diversity are the
object of
research undertaken within our working group and by companies of
international
size - together it is a broad ongoing sector covering from the
improvement of
seeds to the production of healthy foods and sustainable building
blocks for
the chemical industry.
Concerning
the food uses of vegetable oils, two aspects are important:
on the one hand, productivity improvements to face the increasing
demands of a
world population in continuous growth and the needs of emerging
countries and,
on the other hand, the improvement of food value in order to decrease
the
cardiovascular and obesity problems encountered in Western countries.
To reach
the first of these objectives, it is necessary to improve output by
agronomic
or biotechnological methods. The second objective requires the
modification of the
properties of vegetable oils or the anticipated production of new
oleaginous
plants.
The presence
of particular fatty acids like omega 3 and omega 6 and the
presence of vegetable sterols in the oils of plants are at the base of
many
functional foods, as these lipids have shown to be beneficial in
preventing
cardiovascular diseases, and decreasing the incorporation of
cholesterol in the
membranes of arteries.
Lipids are
also highly valued by cosmetics industry for their free
anti-radicals properties (carotenes, flavanoïdes), and vegetable oils
are used
ever more extensively as the base of solar creams and lotions. In the
same way,
the vegetable ceramides and inositols are the active molecules of new
anti-wrinkle creams. The field of application of vegetable lipids in
the beauty
care industry is only at its beginnings and its development is
primarily
limited by the current state of knowledge.
Our society
is highly dependent on raw fossil materials whose reserves
are not inexhaustible and whose prices are in continual rise. To
mitigate the
impact of this situation, it has become a priority to find new sources
of
alternative and renewable energy. Oils from oleaginous field crops like
sunflower and rape present properties close to those of fossil oils and
it is
therefore reasonably probable that alternative raw materials may be
produced
from vegetable oils. Diester is the first example, and the production
of other
materials like biolubricants, solvents, and inks is completely
attainable.
Vegetable
oils, and more generally the lipids of the plants, are of
undeniable economic and social importance. New industrial investments
linked in
particular to the improvement of our society’s health and to
alternative energy
solutions imply the prior development of knowledge of the metabolism of
plant
lipids..
Our working
group organizes the plant lipid session at the annual
Euro Fed Lipid meeting and the biannual European Meeting on Plant
Lipids to
exchange and discuss new developments in our discipline.
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