Targeting lipid metabolism in plants for non-animal sources of nutraceuticals towards sustainable food production and scale up

Abstract

With the growing demand for nutraceuticals, there is renewed interest in tapping different resources, preferably from non-animal sources. This review discusses two major nutraceuticals, vitamin D and essential fatty acids that have documented health-promoting and disease-preventing benefits. The focus here is on the plant sources of two lipid-based nutraceuticals – vitamin D and stearidonic acid. To this end, the biochemical mechanisms have been discussed for the biosynthesis of these nutrients in plants, and compared with their other sources for potential targeting, using biotechnological and metabolic engineering approaches towards large scale production of these nutraceuticals. Minimizing the dependence on animal sources of nutraceuticals and reducing the extensive organic solvent based extraction procedures, are proposed towards environmentally friendly food production and sustainable scale up.