Cataloging the Brassica napus seed metabolome

The allotetraploid Brassicales member canola (Brassica napus L.) is an oil-seed crop sought primarily for vegetable oil, animal feed, and biofuel. With the advent of -omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) technologies, numerous studies have focused on deciphering the functional genes, proteins, and metabolites in canola. However, the oil-yielding seeds are of commercial interest and only a handful of studies using mass-spectrometry (MS) or spectroscopy based platforms have attempted to characterize and quantify metabolites of the seed. Baring metabolite profiling approaches which study groups of chemicals, metabolomic insights into the seeds are very recent. Canola seeds are enriched in fatty acids, glucosinolates, phenylpropanoids (i.e. sinapoyl cholines), flavonoids, and phytohormones among others as has become evident from MS and spectroscopy-based recent studies. Thus, cataloging of the seed metabolome is essential before gaining further insights into their roles in seed biology and plant physiology in order to further understand the qualitative traits and products obtainable from the seeds.