Emerging industrial oil crops: Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.)

It is now the age of the biobased economy, with great efforts expended in both basic and applied research to develop useful products from agriculture that replace those derived from petroleum. Although the name, methods, and approaches have changed, this movement is far from new. Agricultural materials, including seed oils such as castor (see chapter: Castor (Ricinus communis L.)) and jojoba (see chapter: Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis)), have been used for nonfood purposes since time immemorial. The motto of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), dated from 1862, summarizes the general concept of biobased products: "Agriculture is the foundation of manufacture and commerce." For centuries, botanists and explorers have collected and classified plants from around the world. As noted in chapter "Introduction to Industrial Oil Crops," there are hundreds of plants that produce seed oils containing fatty acids with unusual functionalities. While there are a number of domesticated crops that are used primarily for industrial applications, many of the crops identified were not well-suited to cultivation and required breeding and selection in order to be cultivated as crops. Among those crops identified as having value as industrial oil crops, some have been brought into production, although none have approached the success of soybean introduction into the Americas. This chapter includes brief descriptions in the form of "mini-chapters" on a number of the crops that have been identified as industrially useful. Other industrial oil crops are described more extensively in the major crop chapters.