Biodiesel can be prepared through the transmethylation of vegetable oils with short chained alcohols. The most common oils used as the starting material are edible oils, such as those extracted from palm or rapeseed. However, there is interest in producing biodiesel independently of food stock. Common castor is a non-edible oil crop that yields oil rich seeds with a high hydroxylated fatty acid content but that are not particularly appropriate for biodiesel formulation. The OLE1 castor mutant produces oils rich in oleic acid, with minor amounts of hydroxylated ricinoleic. Here, this trait was transferred to the IAS-RC-127 germplasm, which was cultivated as a perennial plant that yields seeds rich in oil, which could easily be extracted and transmethylated in a reaction with methanolic KOH. The resulting methyl esters comply with most of the requirements to be used as biodiesel, comparable to biofuels prepared from other high oleic oils.

This work was funded by EU ERDF (FEDER) funds through the General Secretariat for Universities, Research and Technology of the Andalusian Knowledge System, within the scope of the Andalusian Plan for Research, Development and Innovation (PAIDI, 2020) with the expedient number P20_00072.

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Peer reviewed