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“In effect, we’re telling the plant what kind of genes we want the plant to reduce the ac- tivity of,” explains Dr Wood. “In safflower, it prevents the plant from making more complex chemical bonds that lead to im- purities in the oil.” A WORLD-FIRST IN PURITY The current ceiling for non-gen- etically-modified, plant-based oleic oil is a purity level of around 80 per cent. CSIRO’s super-high oleic safflower pro- duces oil that is 92 per cent pure oleic acid – significantly higher than any other com- mercial plant-based oil in the world. And while a jump from 80 to 92 per cent might not sound overly exciting, that’s a sizable reduction in the impurities of the oil. Every percentage point higher in oleic acid eliminates impurities and makes the oil more valuable. All over the world, scientists have been attempting to produce a super-high oleic oil in a range of crops, such as soybean, canola, linseed and maize. All of these at- tempts have failed due to the com- plicated oil synthesis program of those seeds, but safflower’s unique genetic code made it different. RNAi technology in an oil- seed crop for a commercial release ? DID YOU KNOW The SHO safflower marks the first time CSIRO has used
some world-leading technology in this area, known as ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi), or gene silencing.” Generally, safflower seeds have an oleic acid content as low as 20 per cent. But thanks to CSIRO’s gene-silencing technol- ogy, two of the oil-processing en- zymes active within the seed can be inactivated – producing seeds with a much higher oleic acid content. Importantly, the pro- cess has no side effects, as gene silencing only impacts the oil in the seed and leaves all the other oils in the rest of the safflower plant untouched.
Safflower produces oleic acid – a monounsaturated fatty acid that exists in many animal and vegetable fats and oils. Oleic acid is used to create high-oleic oil, a sought-after product in the food production industry that is high in unsaturated fat and low in saturated fat, and thus can keep food shelf-stable and preserve flavour. “Modifying plant oils has been one of CSIRO’s strengths for 30 years,” says Dr Craig Wood, Team and Project Leader at CSIRO Agri- culture and Food. “One of the key reasons we went with safflower was that CSIRO had developed
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