Future prospects for genetic modification of the composition of edible oils from higher plants.

It is now routinely possible to introduce genes into many plant species of agronomic significance. This has created new opportunities to genetically engineer higher plants to produce edible fats and oils with predefined fatty acid composition. Because of the chemical diversity of plants, the genes required for synthesis of many different types of lipids exist in nondomesticated species. Thus, it should be possible to modify the storage-lipid composition of crop plants by transferring the relevant genes from the wild species into crop plants. However, although a coherent model now exists for plant-lipid metabolism, a substantial amount of the specific information required to undertake genetic engineering of plant-lipid metabolism is not yet available.