Molecular Plant Breeding 2016, Vol.7, No.24, 1
-
8
1
Research Article Open Access
A Quantitative Assay for Fatty Acid Composition of Castor Seed in Different
Developmental Stages
Chen Xiaofeng
1,2
, Peng Mu
1,3*
, Huang Fenglan
1,2
, Luo Rui
4
, Zhao Yong
1
, Bao Chunguang
4
, Lei Xue
1
, Li Yue
1
1 College of Life Science, Inner Mongolia University for the Nationalities, Tongliao 028043, China
2 Inner Mongolia Industrial Engineering Research Center of Universities for Castor, Tongliao 028043, China
3 College of Life Science, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China
4 Tongliao Academy of Agricultural Science, Tongliao 028043, China
*This author has contributed equally to this work
Corresponding authors Email:
huangfenglan2008@163.com
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2016, Vol.7, No.24 doi
Received: 01 Feb., 2016
Accepted: 15 Mar., 2016
Published: 07 Apr., 2016
Copyright © 2015
Chen et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Chen X.F., Peng M., Huang F.L., Luo R., Zhao Y., Bao C.G, Lei X., and Li Y., 2016, A Quantitative Assay for Fatty Acid Composition of Castor Seed in
Different Developmental Stages, Molecular Plant Breeding, 7(24): 1-8 (doi
Abstract
The aim of this study was to detect and investigate the fatty acid composition of castor seed under different development
stage using soxhlet extraction and capillary gas chromatography methods to find the dynamic change of fatty acid composition and
their relationships. The results showed that oil content and twelve fatty acid compositions were identified in the seed development,
while the content of oil and compositions were significantly different and monitored during seed development. Oil content displayed
a linear increase from the beginning of seed formation to maturation. Several compositions, mytistic acid, behenic acid and lignoceric
acid, were just found at initial seed filling phase and significantly declined with seed maturity, suggesting that fatty acid composition
of castor seed in the initial phases of seed formation differed substantially form that of the mature seeds. The correlation analysis
results revealed significant positive correlations of seed development time with mostly fatty acids, further demonstrating that the fatty
acids were closely correlated with seed development. These obtained results will benefit for breeding research in high oil content of
castor.
Keywords
Ricinus communis
L.; fatty acids; oil content; seed development; correlation coefficient
Introduction
Castor (
Ricinus communis
L.) is one of the most important industry oilseed crops, and mainly used industry,
medicine and agriculture. Although castor seed is a non-edible, its productions were also widely used as
lubricating agent, emulgator, and plasticizer. The fatty acid composition of castor seed has been reported in many
papers. Previous researches have demonstrated that the fatty acid composition of castorbean oil by and large
includes eight main ingredients, and their content depends on genetic and environmental conditions (Fengjuan et
al., 2008; Huang et al., 2015b; Ucciani et al., 2014). It is well known that oil content and fatty acid composition of
castor seed are significant different among these reports from different area, suggesting that oil content closely
depends in the environmental conditions (Salimon et al., 2010; Bale et al., 2013a; Khan et al., 2010). Furthermore,
Lin et al. (1998) and Mckeon et al. (2000) have been found the biosynthesis pathway and its key enzymes of
castor oil, which was useful for molecular breeding to improving the oil content.
Recently, with nonrenewable resource such as oil and natural gas becoming shortage, castor oil as renewable
resource have been attracted great attention in the world. China is the second largest producer of castor. However,
the cultivated area is gradually decrease year by year caused castorbean in short supply due to castor low field and
price, therefore, increase production is the main objective in castor breeding. The oil high quality breeding
research of castor has just begun in recent years. But the following questions is still unknown, including what are
the fatty acid composition of castor seed in different development stages, what is the dynamic change of each
composition, and how does ricinoleic acid relate to other fatty acids under developmental stages.
Therefore, the main objective of this study was to detect and investigate the fatty acid composition of castor seed
