ABSTRACT
Vegetable oils are one of the most robust oils used around the world for myriad applications. Most importantly, they are widely used in the food processing industry and other related industries, which produces materials for day-to-day human consumption. While the purified vegetable oils are used for human consumption, there are a lot of oily waste streams and byproducts generated during the purification process. These oily waste streams are inedible and usually discarded or used in the production of low-grade products, such as animal feed. In the biosynthesis of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), carbon feedstocks are the most essential component for proper PHA production. The use of various vegetable oils and its byproducts to produce PHA has been demonstrated by numerous research groups worldwide. However, the question remains: how efficiently can these vegetable oils and oily waste streams be used by the PHA producing strains? Also, in the ongoing efforts to reduce the cost of PHA production, the use of cheap carbon feedstocks is necessary. This chapter discusses the use of vegetable oils and its byproducts, including oils that have no nutritional value by various bacterial strains for PHA biosynthesis. This includes the production of PHA by both wild-type and genetically engineered bacterial strains. Apart from that, the application of these bacterial strains in the large-scale production of PHA at a low cost are also discussed in this chapter.
