A key element of successful development of new cultivars is availability of inexpensive and rapid methods for measurement of fatty acids in seeds. Oilseeds are important sources of vegetable oils. Genetic variation for fatty acid composition is essential for genetic improvement of the oil quality and developing new cultivars. Screening of the large number of germplasm collections requires use of non-destructive analytical technique. About 400 accessions of the safflower were scanned by NIRS as intact seed, and their reference values regressed against different spectral transformations by modiûed partial least squares regression. A calibration set of thirty two accessions (n=32) was analysed by both NIRS and gas-liquid chromatography (GLC) and calibration equations for the major fatty acids were developed. Equation was checked with external validation set of 30 samples. Calibration was focused on the possibility of screening seed samples of different composition of oleic acid (C18:1) and linoleic acid (C18:2) using NIRS analysis.Calibration equation demonstrated a close relationship between NIRS and GLC data for oil (r2=0.891), palmitic (r2=0.940), stearic (r2=0.921), oleic (r2=0.780) and linoleic acid (r2=0.939). The results indicated that NIRS could be used to rapidly determine the fatty acid composition in rapeseed seeds in the breeding programmes for high quality rapeseed oil. The results demonstrated that NIRS is a non-destructive, reliable and rapid selection tool for oil quality evaluation. We concluded that a reliable estimation of oil content, palmitic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid and linoleic acid content in intact seeds of safflower is possible by using NIRS technique.
Fatty acids, Near Infrared Spectroscopy, Oil content, Safflower
