Informed metabolic engineering of oil crops using control analysis

Oil crops are a very important agricultural commodity. Demand for such oils is rising steadily (at more than 5% per year over the last half century). Although the majority of plant oils are used for food or animal feed, there is increasing interest in their use as renewable chemicals for industry. Because of the demonstrated demand for oils and finite agricultural land, attention is focussing on improving productivity. Genetic manipulation of crop plants needs a knowledge of the biosynthetic pathways concerned and how they are regulated. Although there are different ways to acquire much information, metabolic flux and metabolic control analyses are ways to provide quantitative assessments. In this review we describe our experiments using metabolic control analysis on important crops - oil palm, oilseed rape, olive and soybean. Such research provides information for future informed genetic manipulations and we give a successful example of this in oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.).