Saturday 18 June 2016

Rapeseed

Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape, oilseed rape, rapa, rappi,
rapaseed (and, in the case of one particular group of cultivars, canola), is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), consumed in China (油菜: Mandarin Pinyin yóucài; Cantonese:yau choy) and Southern Africa as a vegetable. The name derives from the Latin for turnip, rāpa or rāpum, and is first recorded in English at the end of the 14th century. Older writers usually distinguished the turnip and rape by the adjectives 'round' and 'long' (-'rooted'), respectively.Rutabagas, Brassica napobrassica, are sometimes considered a variety of B. napus. Some botanists also include the closely related B. rapa within B. napus.

B. napus is cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, the third-largest source of vegetable oil in the world.

Rapeseed oil is one of the oldest vegetable oils, but historically was used in limited quantities due to high levels of erucic acid, which is damaging to cardiac muscle of animals, and glucosinolates, which made it less nutritious in animal feed. Rapeseed oil can contain up to 54% erucic acid. Food-grade canola oil derived from rapeseed cultivars, also known as rapeseed 00 oil, low erucic acid rapeseed oil, LEAR oil, and rapeseed canola-equivalent oil, has been generally recognized as safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Canola oil is limited by government regulation to a maximum of 2% erucic acid by weight in the USA and 5% in the EU, with special regulations for infant food. These low levels of erucic acid are not believed to cause harm in human neonates.

In 1981, a deadly outbreak of disease in Spain, known as toxic oil syndrome, was caused by the consumption of colza oil (a cousin of rapeseed oil procured from a similar species of rapa) for industrial use that was fraudulently sold as olive oil to be consumed in cooking, salads, and other foods. Symptoms appeared as a typical pneumonia with interstitial infiltrates on chest X-ray, complicated by pulmonary hypertension in a significant number of cases.

Rapeseed pollen contains known allergens. Whether rape pollen causes hay fever has not been well established, because rape is an insect-pollinated (entomophilous) crop, whereas hay fever is usually caused by wind-pollinated plants. The inhalation of oilseed rape dust may cause asthma in agricultural workers.

Worldwide production of rapeseed (including canola) has increased sixfold between 1975 and 2007. The production of canola and rapeseed since 1975 has opened up the edible oil market for rapeseed oil. Since 2002, production of biodiesel has been steadily increasing in EU and USA to 6 million metric tons in 2006. Rapeseed oil is positioned to supply a good portion of the vegetable oils needed to produce that fuel. World production is thus expected to trend further upward between 2005 and 2015 as bioiesel content requirements in Europe go into effect. Every ton of rapeseed yields about 400 kg of oil. Rapeseed oil takes between 135 and 150 days to mature, with some varieties only taking 110. In France, Avril Group processed half of the rapeseed grains collected in 2014.

فَبِأَيِّ آلاءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذبٰن

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