Estimation of Fatty Acid Content in Intact Seeds of Oilseed Rape (Brassica napus L.) Lines Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Based on NIRS (near infrared reflectance spectroscopy) measurements carried out in a collection of 262 samples of winter oilseed rape with a different content of fatty acids (FA) in oil, calibration equations for the laboratory instrument Foss-NIRSystem 6500 were developed. Calibration was focused on the possibility of screening seed samples of different composition of oleic acid (C18:1), linoleic acid (C18:2) and linolenic acid (C18:3) using NIRS analysis. The reference method was gas chromatography (GC). The content of FA in segre - gating F 2 generations after crossing between lines with different contents of FA and lines with standard content of FA in oil ranged from 32.3 to 82.0% for C18:1, 10.2-26.8% for C18:2 and 3.3-11.8% for C18:3. The verification of a validation equation in 50 randomly selected samples of F 2 generation in the year 2006 proved high correla- tion coefficients (r) between NIRS analysis and GC values, r = 0.86 for C18:1, r = 0.82 for C18:2 and r = 0.85 for C18:3. Non-destructive NIRS analysis enables rapid and reliable selection of materials with different composition of FA in the seed of oilseed rape (lines with desirable high content of C18:1 and low content of C18:3).