Canola

In agriculture, Canola is a trademarked cultivar of the rapeseed plant from which rapeseed oil is obtained. It was initially bred in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur Stefansson in the 1970s.

Canola Oil is a term coined from the words "Canadian" and "oil".

History

The ancestor of Canola is a plant called rapeseed. In ancient times, rapeseed oil was used in Asia and Europe in lamps, for cooking, and in foods. Today, its seeds contain a highly desirable oil used in shortening, salad oil, cooking sprays, and many other foods, as well as in printing ink, hydraulic fluids, and suntan lotion. Solid parts of the plant may be used as fertilizers and in feed for livestock, poultry, and fish.

There was high demand for rapeseed oil during World War II as it was one of the most effective lubricants for metal engine parts. After the war, demand declined sharply and farmers began to look for other uses for the plant and its products. Edible rapeseed oil extracts were first put on the market in 1956-1957, but these suffered from several unacceptable characteristics. Rapeseed oil had a distinctive taste and a disagreeable greenish colour due to the presence of chlorophyll. It also contained a high concentration of erucic acid, suspected of causing cancer if ingested in large amounts. Feed meal from the rapeseed plants was not particularly appealing to livestock, due to high levels of sharp-tasting compounds called glucosinolates.

Rapeseed had been grown in Canada (mainly Saskatchewan) since 1936. Canadian plant breeders took up the challenge to improve the quality of the plant. In 1968, Dr. Baldur Stefansson of the University of Manitoba used selective breeding to develop a low erucic acid variety of rapeseed. In 1974 another variety was produced with both a low erucic acid content and a low level of glucosinolates; this was dubbed Canola.

A variety developed in 1998 is considered to be the most disease- and drought-resistant variety of Canola to date. Recent varieties such as this have been produced by gene splicing techniques.

Canola today

Today about 75% of the Canola crops planted in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan are herbicide-tolerant varieties.

In 2004, North Dakota produced 91% of the Canola in the United States. [1]

Compared with sunflower, corn, olive, peanut, and many other oils, Canola has a low ratio of saturated to unsaturated fat. This is widely considered to have health benefits.

Canola oil extraction

Step 1.

• The first stage in processing canola is to roll or flake the seed. This ruptures cells and makes the oil easier to extract.

Step 2.

• Next the flaked or rolled seeds are cooked and subjected to a mild pressing process which removes some of the oil and compresses the seeds into large chunks called "cake fragments".

Step 3.

• The cake fragments undergo further processing to remove most of the remaining oil. The oil extracted during each step is combined. The oil is then subjected to processing according to the end product requirements. Different treatments are used to process salad oils, margarines, and shortenings.