Improving linolenic acid content in rapeseed oil by overexpression of and genes.

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With the increasing public attention to the health benefit of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and demand for linolenic acid (C18:3), it is of great significance to increase the C18:3 content in our meal. As an oil crop with high content of C18:3, has three homologous copies of and three homologous copies . In this study, we seed-specifically overexpressed two fatty acid desaturase genes, and , in rapeseed cultivar Zhongshuang 9. The results show that C18:3 content in and overexpressed seeds is increased from 8.62% in wild-type (WT) to 10.62-12.95% and 14.54-26.16%, respectively. We crossed and overexpression lines, and stable homozygous digenic crossed lines were obtained. The C18:3 content was increased from 8.62% in WT to 28.46-53.57% in crossed overexpression lines. In addition, we found that the overexpression of and had no effect on rapeseed growth, development, and other agronomic traits. In conclusion, we successfully generated rapeseed germplasms with high C18:3 content by simultaneously overexpressing and , which provides a feasible way for breeding high C18:3 rapeseed cultivars.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11032-024-01445-0.