Soybean

Bioenergy, the energy derived from biomass, cannot substitute entirely for fossil fuels given present agricultural practices, but it can help to reduce the use of fossil fuels to a certain extent. The main type of bioenergy production is the burning of solid materials or liquid biofuel derived from major bioenergy crops. These diverse and sustainable bioenergy crops will noticeably improve global energy security and environmental benets. In the United States, most ethanol is produced from corn whereas biodiesel is made from soybean oil or recycled cooking oils. Production and usage of biodiesel, fatty acid alkyl esters, has become more attractive because of its environment friendliness and their origin from the renewable resources (Shieh et al. 2003). Alkali-catalyzed transesterication of oil or fatty acids with the help of an alcohol is the base reaction and produces fatty acid methyl esters and glycerol. Through using the biocatalysts or the enzymatic biodiesel, production has more commercial potential than the complete chemical approach (Hass et al. 2002; Shieh et al. 2003; Tan et al. 2010). Soybean oil has been broadly studied as a raw material for fatty acid methyl ester biodiesel production by transesterication (Abreu et al. 2003; Suppes et al. 2004; Sensoz and

20.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 503 20.2 Brief History of Soybean Production and Oil Improvement ..............................................504 20.3 Soybean Oil Quantity .........................................................................................................507 20.4 Palmitic Acid ......................................................................................................................508 20.5 Stearic Acid ........................................................................................................................ 511 20.6 Oleic Acid ........................................................................................................................... 512 20.7 Linoleic Acid ...................................................................................................................... 513 20.8 Linolenic Acid .................................................................................................................... 514 20.9 Environmental Effect on Oil and Fatty Acid Concentration in Soybean ........................... 515 20.10 Genetic Engineering for Bioenergy Traits in Soybean ....................................................... 516 20.11 Conclusions and Future Perspectives.................................................................................. 517 Acknow ledgment ........................................................................................................................... 518 References ...................................................................................................................................... 518

Kaynar 2006). When compared with the other oil seed crops, soybean acreages are greater in the United States and this contributes toward the higher availability of soybean oil for biofuel feedstock. Soybean oil is increasingly used as feedstock for the production of biodiesel.