ABSTRACT

The use of plants as chemical factories such as for the production of epoxy compounds covered in this chapter promises to enhance the variety and quality of products available in the future. This requires no fossil fuel for the actual biosynthesis reactions, instead using sunlight, H2O, and atmospheric CO2 for the hydrocarbon syntheses. Engineering oilseeds for high-epoxy fatty acid accumulation in triacylglycerol (TAG) is a way to achieve this goal. This would greatly increase the value of such improved seeds and reduce epoxide production costs. Safety concerns associated with industrial epoxidation of oils would also be eliminated. A considerable market currently exists for epoxy fatty acids, particularly for epoxy coatings and plasticizers. Presently, most of these are derived from petroleum. Soybean and linseed oil are currently utilized to some extent to produce epoxidized oil by introducing an epoxy group across the double bonds of polyunsaturated fatty acids. This is a costly process, and it would be more economical if the biosynthetic reactions in major oilseed crops were altered such that the seeds themselves converted the polyunsaturated fatty acids into epoxy fatty acids. There is no known way to produce a commercial oilseed that accumulates epoxy fatty acids by conventional breeding and genetics. Certain genotypes of several plant species, however, accumulate high levels of epoxy fatty acids in the seed oil. The best examples of this are Vernonia galamensis, Stokesia laevis, and Euphorbia lagascae.