Influence of Ems Applications on Fatty Acids Composition in Safflower

Abstract

Safflower is a valuable oil plant with 13-46% seed oil content rich in fatty acids, especially linoleic acid. In latest years, the safflower varieties with excessive oleic acid content have been started to be grown due to their high storage stability and suitability for frying. The research aimed to determine the influence of Ethyl Methane Sulfonate (EMS), which is the most commonly used chemical mutagen in experimental genetics, on the fatty acids' composition of safflower oil. In this study, seven different EMS rates were applied to 20 seeds harvested in August. As a result of the study, the primary fatty acids of the oil of the control plot plants were identified as 73% linoleic, 12% oleic, 5.8% palmitic, and 2.2% stearic acid. Compared to the control, the highest reduction among fatty acids was observed as 8.40% in oleic acid with 2 h of 0.64% EMS treatment. However, there were increases in oleic acid, stearic acid, and linoleic acid contents in some applications. In addition, lauric acid, which was not detected in the control treatments, was detected in most of the other applications, where the highest lauric acid ratio of 14.945% was determined under EMS treatment of 0.64% for 2 h. The results showed that the influence of EMS mutagenesis on safflower fatty acid composition might be affected differently by different mutation levels. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the impact of EMS mutagenesis on fatty acids across successive generations to confirm the results of this study.