The USA’S Agricultural Research Service is claiming that within two years, a nonhydrogenated soybean oil (with no trans fats) will be available commercially and that by 2009 soybean oil will rival olive oil regarding monounsaturated fats.
The ARS says the innovations will come from ARS scientists working within a US Legume Crop Genomics Initiative, which has been focusing on creating special soybean lines for breeders. Their seeds contain induced mutations, whose properties have been tested by the initiative’s scientists. The system developed for this work – called TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) – enables breeders to isolate the effect of specific genes.