Technical Report
 

Agronomic Requirements of Euphorbia lagascae: A Potential New Drought-Tolerant Crop for Semi-Arid Oregon: 2008

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  • Euphorbia lagascae has been recognized as one of the more promising potential new industrial crops for temperate latitudes (Roseberg, 1996). In the late 1950s and early 1960s the USDA analyzed many plant species in search of novel chemical compounds. They first recognized that E. lagascae (Spreng.), Euphorbiaceae (euphorb or spurge family), was unique among the 58 euphorbs tested (and almost unique among all plants) in that the seed oil contained high levels of a C18 epoxy fatty acid (EFA) known as vernolic acid (12,13 epoxy-cis-9- octadecenoic acid) (Kleiman et al., 1965). E. lagascae (hereafter simply called ‘euphorbia’) is a drought-tolerant native of Spain whose seed contains about 45%-50% oil, of which 60%-65% is vernolic acid (Kleiman et al., 1965; Vogel et al., 1993). Vernolic acid is an EFA of great interest to the paint and coating industry as a drying solvent in alkyd resin paints, a plasticizer or additive in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resins (Riser et al., 1962; Carlson et al., 1981; Carlson and Chang, 1985; Perdue, 1986), and possibly in pharmaceutical applications (Ferrigni and McLaughlin, 1984). Paints formulated with vernolic acid emit very low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and thus using such paints would greatly reduce the VOC air pollution that now occurs with volatilization of alkyd resins in conventional paints (Brownback and Glaser, 1992; Anon, 1993). The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 required the reduction of VOC pollutants, and regulations in California have been implemented earlier with greater effect upon the paint industry. After initially discovering euphorbia’s valuable and nearly unique seed oil, the major problem that hindered both breeding and agronomic research needed to develop euphorbia as a crop has been its violent seed shattering habit, combined with its indeterminate flowering and seed habit, making it difficult both to harvest and to measure seed yield. No wild accessions of euphorbia contain a non-shattering trait (Vogel et al., 1993; Pascual-Villalobos et al., 1994). However, in the early-1990s, chemically induced, non-shattering mutants were developed in Spain (Pascual and Correal, 1992; Pascual-Villalobos et al., 1994; Pascual-Villalobos, 1996). These non-shattering seeds were transferred to Oregon State University in the mid-1990s and formed the basis for research conducted at the Southern Oregon Research & Extension Center (SOREC) and the Klamath Basin Research & Extension Center (KBREC) on a sporadic basis starting in 1995. Euphorbia is highly self-fertile, with pollen transfer occurring before insects can access the floral organs (Vogel et al., 1993). Therefore, outcrossing should be limited. We have observed that, because of its apparent tolerance to drought and heat, euphorbia appears to prefer a warm growing season and very dry conditions during seed maturation, or else it tends to remain green and continue growing. Due to the presence of latex and other potentially irritating compounds in the stems and petioles, it will be important to understand which safety precautions are necessary during harvest and processing (Turley et al., 2000). Processing chemistry and product development should continue on a larger scale as more seed becomes available.
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