Sunflower parent breeding material with a high content of stearic acid

Solid fats are essential in the food industry. The most commonly used solid oils include hydrogenated vegetable oil, palm oil, coconut oil and cocoa butter. The solidity of these oils is due to their high content of saturated fatty acids C8:0–C16:0. Nutritionally, the most beneficial of the solid oils are those with lower amounts of lauric, myristic and palmitic fatty acids and a comparatively higher amount of stearic acid. In traditional sunflower oil, the main saturated fatty acids are palmitic and stearic acids, their total mass fraction does not exceed 10–12%. After the discov-ery of the high-stearic mutation in sunflower, it became possible to increase the content of C18:0 to more than 10%. As a result of six years breeding work at V.S. Pustovoit All-Russian Research Institute of Oil Crops (VNIIMK), seven donor lines with high stearic acid content (14–23%) were developed. Five of them, LG31, LG32, LG34, LG36, and LG37, contain on average 58–74% of oleic acid, and donor lines LG33 and LG35 – 12 and 45%, respectively. Lines with similar fatty acid composition of seed oil were previously absent in the genetic collection of VNIIMK. At present, these lines are included in the breeding program as parent material for obtaining parental lines of sunflower hybrids with increased content of satu-rated stearic acid.