Vegetable oils are important for human and animal nutrition and as renewable resources for chemical feedstocks. We provide an overview of transgenic and genome editing approaches for modifying plant oils, describing useful model and crop systems and different strategies for transgenic modifications. We also describe new genome editing approaches that are beginning to be applied to oilseed plants and crops. These approaches are illustrated with examples for modifying the nutritional quality of vegetable oils by altering fatty acid desaturation, producing non-native fatty acids in oilseeds, and enhancing the overall accumulation of oil in seeds and leaves.
Keywords: Acyl transferase; CRISPR; Fatty acid; Fatty acid desaturase; Genome editing; Healthy oils; Industrial oils; Lipid biosynthesis; Metabolic engineering; Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs).