Estimation of Fatty Acid Content in Intact Seeds of Oilseed Rape (Brassica napus L.) Lines Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

Based on NIRS (near infrared reflectance spectroscopy) measurements carried out in a collection of 262 samples of winter oilseed rape with a different content of fatty acids (FA) in oil, calibration equations for the laboratory instrument Foss-NIRSystem 6500 were developed. Calibration was focused on the possibility of screening seed samples of different composition of oleic acid (C18:1), linoleic acid (C18:2) and linolenic acid (C18:3) using NIRS analysis. The reference method was gas chromatography (GC). The content of FA in segregating F2 generations after crossing between lines with different contents of FA and lines with standard content of FA in oil ranged from 32.3 to 82.0% for C18:1, 10.2-26.8% for C18:2 and 3.3-11.8% for C18:3. The verification of a validation equation in 50 randomly selected samples of F2 generation in the year 2006 proved high correlation coefficients (r) between NIRS analysis and GC values, r = 0.86 for C18:1, r = 0.82 for C18:2 and r = 0.85 for C18:3. Non-destructive NIRS analysis enables rapid and reliable selection of materials with different composition of FA in the seed of oilseed rape (lines with desirable high content of C18:1 and low content of C18:3).

Keywords

• winter oilseed rape
• fatty acids
• oleic acid
• linoleic acid
• linolenic acid
• nirs calibration