Vernonia galamensis, a natural source of epoxy oil: variation in fatty acid composition of seed and leaf lipids

Vernonia galamensis is a new potential industrial oilseed crop with origin in East Africa. The seed oil has unique chemical and physical properties, that will permit its use in the formulation of reactive diluents, products to serve as solvents that become part of the dry paint surface and do not evaporate to pollute the air. A collection of 41 accessions was evaluated for seed and leaf fatty acid composition. In the seed, vernolic acid (C18:10) varied from 54 to 74%, and linoleic acid (C18:2) from 3 to 32%. In the leaf linolenic acid (C18:3) varied from 41 to 59%, palmitic (C16:0) from 12 to 22% and C18:4 from 8 to 17%. Correlation analysis between the seed fatty acids showed that vernolic acid is negatively correlated with C16:0, C18:0, C18:2, C18:3. In the leaf, negative correlations between C18:3 and the other leaf fatty acids were observed. C18:2 and C18:3 showed negative and positive correlations, respectively between the leaves and the seed. In general, there is a wide range of fatty acid composition specially vernolic and linolenic acids in the seed and in the leaf, respectively which might indicate the potential for oil quality improvement of V. galamensis.