National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110 012, India
* Corresponding author.
Lipid metabolism in plants provides uncommon opportunities for genetic engineering to produce plant oils suited to a variety of end-uses. These opportunities include improvement of food and nutritional value, creating specialty lipids and feedstocks for high-value products and designing custom-made materials for industry. Genetic engineering intervention for production of novel transgenic plants which elaborate the desired product has graduated from academic exercise to commercial possibilities. It is now realized that transgenic crops can serve as biological factories for upscaling production of premium lipids via molecular farming. This review is an attempt at analyzing the status in this field.
lipid, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, oilseed crops, fatty acids, specialty oils
