Desired quality attributes in winter and summer rapeseed

Abstract

Quality assurance programs have played a significant role in rehabilitating and maintaining the importance of rapeseed and its products. In Europe, the processing of indigenous and Canadian rapeseed ensures unifrom plant utilization throughout the year which in itself contributes to improving quality. Indigenous rapeseed is predominantly of the high-yielding winter type. The European oil mills have learned to adapt to differences in low erucic acid seed characteristics during processing. The influence of different conditioning and pre-expelling parameters on the characteristics of expeller and extraction oil is especially receiving attention. Sulfur compounds, phosphatide content, color and analytical oxidation values are important criteria for the required refining techniques, which can range from classical methods to physical refining, and the quality of the fully refined product. While low erucic acid rapeseed oil can generally be regarded as an alternative to soyabean oil, crystallization behavior of hardened products can differ significantly, which appears to be a function of fatty acid composition. Progress is also being made in upgrading meal quality, especially for application in poultry feed, by develo** cultivars with glucosinolate levels below 1%. Such new varieties might also contribute to reducing the problem of fishy egg taint observed with some breeds of layers. Decreased rumen degradability of rapeseed meal by treatment with formaldehyde may further improve flexibility of use. Various established and potential quality attributes for rapeseed, meal and oil are reviewed.