Vegetable oils, consisting principally of triacylglycerols (TAG), are major sources of calories and essential fatty acids in the human diet. The fatty acid composition of TAG is a primary determinant of the nutritional quality and health-promoting properties of vegetable oils. TAG fatty acid composition also affects the functionality and properties of vegetable oils in food applications and in food processing and preparation. Vegetable oils with improved nutritional and functional properties have been developed for oilseed crops by selection and breeding of fatty acid biosynthetic mutants. These efforts have been effective at generating vegetable oils with altered relative amounts of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in seed TAG, but are constrained by insufficient genetic diversity for producing oils with “healthy” fatty acids that are not typically found in major oilseeds. The development and application of biotechnological tools have instead enabled the generation of oilseeds that produce novel fatty acid compositions with improved nutritional value by the introduction of genes from alternative sources, including plants, bacteria, and fungi. These tools have also allowed the generation of desired oil compositions that have proven difficult to obtain by breeding without compromised performance in selected oilseed crops. Here, we review biotechnological tools for increasing crop genetic diversity and their application for commercial or proof-of-principal development of oilseeds with expanded utility for food and feed applications and higher value nutritional and nutraceutical markets.

植物油主要由三酰基甘油（TAG）组成，是人类饮食中卡路里和必需脂肪酸的主要来源。TAG的脂肪酸组成是决定植物油营养品质和促进健康的主要因素。TAG脂肪酸的组成还影响植物油在食品应用以及食品加工和制备中的功能和特性。通过选择和育种脂肪酸生物合成突变体，已开发出具有改善的营养和功能特性的植物油用于油料作物。这些努力对于产生种子TAG中相对饱和和不饱和脂肪酸相对含量发生变化的植物油非常有效，但是受到遗传多样性不足的限制，无法生产主要油籽中通常不存在的具有“健康”脂肪酸的油。相反，生物技术工具的开发和应用使得能够通过从包括植物，细菌和真菌在内的其他来源引入基因，来生产油籽，从而生产出具有改良营养价值的新型脂肪酸组合物。这些工具还允许生成所需的油组合物，已证明很难在不损害所选油料作物性能的情况下通过育种获得所需的油组合物。这里，