Reciprocal crosses were made between a plant of Brassica campestris L. containing no erucic acid in its seed oil and two plants of the Indian varieties Yellow and Brown Sarson grown from seed containing approximately 59% erucic acid. The erucic acid content in the oil from F1 embryos was intermediate between the parents indicating embryonic control of the synthesis of this acid. Seed oil analysis of F2, F3, and backcross populations supported the hypothesis that erucic acid synthesis is controlled by a single non-dominant gene. Analysis of oil extracted from immature and partially germinated seed showed that erucic acid content was highest in fully matured non-germinated seed.

non-irrigated fields were due to differences in tuber moisture.

No abstract

The chlorogenic acid (CA) content of dehulled and defatted sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) seeds was determined on a portion of the germplasm maintained at the Modern Research Station. This material represented 167 inbred accessions, 387 highly inbred Morden lines, and 42 North American wild H. annuus collections.Cultivated sunflower seeds contained from 1.1 to 4.5% CA with an overall mean of 2.8% and a normal distribution. Approximately 6% of the cultivated inbreds contained 2% or less CA. The wild sunflower lines averaged 2.1% CA with almost half containing less than 2% CA.There was a highly significant correlation between CA content and oil content in all populations. Seed size was not related with CA content. In the wild population, low CA content was highly significantly correlated with high hull content. Although there was no association between country of origin and CA content for the cultivated inbreds, wild sunflowers collected in the southern USA contained lower levels of CA than those collected north of 40°N latitude.

The embryo, endosperm, testa and pericarp from seeds of three buckwheat species were analyzed for total lipid content and fatty acid composition. The average lipid content of these tissues was 8.2%, 0.4%, 2.0% and 0.5%, respectively. Eighteen fatty acids were tentatively identified in buckwheat oil. The following eight constituted an average of more than 93% of the total acids: palmiticl stearic, oleic I linoleic, linolenic, arachidic, behenic and lignoceric acids. The embryo tissue of cultivated and Tartary buckwheats contained the fewest minor acids with an average of 95% of the acids containing either 16 or 18 carbons. The pericarp, or hull, had a unique composition with higher levels of saturated acids, odd carbon acids and acids of 20 or more carbons than any other tissues. The compositions of the testa and endorsperm were intermediate.