MJ,
Last year while driving around England we notice fields of yellow. We were told it's rape seed. What is rape seed used for?

Thanks
 
Not MJ. LOL
If around this time of the year it might be a mustard type cover crop. In The Netherlands that is, don't know about the UK.
Rape seed is in beautiful yellow in the spring.
FWIIW
 
Rapeseed didn't seem politically correct as a name for this plant..Canola is the term to name it. Canola seed is pressed for its oil content, Canola oil being used in food and baking operations. The mealy part of the seed is milled and used in flours,alcohol production and cattle feed. A large field of Canola in bloom is a pretty picture
 

That could be said about 90% of the questions asked on the forum but then, what would be the point of the forum existing?
 
Rapeseed oil was also use to make the very durable floor coverings our mothers and grandmas had , called linoleum. Linoleum can still be purchased, but cost much more than the cheap vnyl floor coverings. The cheaper linoleum floor coverings only had the patterns in a thin layer on top, and in heavy traffic areas, the pattern would wear through. The more expensive linoleum was called inlayed , and as the surface wore down , the pattern never changes, as it went through to the backing. I remember my mother buying table cloths made from Rapeseed oil as well, she call the oil cloth.
 
The name has an interesting history. The oil extracted from the seed is Canola. The plant is LEAR: Low Eurisic (sp?) Acid Rape. (All food oils are made up from fatty acids, eurisic acid is one of them.) LEAR is a hybrid form of common rape developed in Canada for the specific purpose of having a very low eurisic acid content. Rape is well suited for the soil and climate of Canada's enormous expanse of flat land but it was believed that rape's high eurisic acid content was harmful to human health. A fortune was spent on hybridization of rape and promotion of LEAR. It turns out eurisic acid is not harmful. In fact it can be used medicinally for some diseases. Since the development of LEAR was a Canadian project, the oil was named Canola - Canadian Oil.
 
Very interesting. I did not know linseed oil had been replaced by rapeseed oil in linoleum. I used to work for Armstrong 25 years ago. The old lino ovens still existed but had not been used in years. Linoleum had pretty much been replaced by vinyl flooring by then. It might be making a comeback though since is/was viewed as more environmentally friendly.
 
Hi Hendrik, Mustard was used a lot in the 1950s and 1960s as a cover crop and ploughed in for green manure but see very little now. MJ
 
In the 50s Dad had it in a hog pasture...but I remember the plant having big leaves, not like the canola that I see today...tall and spindly.
 
My information came from my brother. He is a university Prof. In Manitoba, and has put new linoleum flooring in his kitchen and high traffic hallways in his home. All made from Rapeseed oil in western Canada. My feeling is they are trying to breath new life into an old product, while creating new markets for what is now called Canola.
 
"But long before rapeseed became a cooking oil, it was an industrial oil used as a lubricant in Victorian steam engines and World War II ships. Back in those days, it wasn't even edible because it contained such high levels of erucic acid, which is toxic, and glucosinalates. Rapeseed, after all, is a brassica ? a genus of plants that includes Brussels sprouts, mustard and broccoli ? and it had a particularly high quantity of glucosinalates, which impart a flavor often described as "cabbagey," according to Paul Williams, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin.

In the 1970s, Canadian scientists brought these levels of erucic acid and glucosinalates almost to zero through plant breeding. And they were so proud of their creation, which also had the lowest level of saturated fat (7 percent) of any vegetable oil, they gave it a new name: canola, a contraction of Canada and ola, meaning oil."
Source
 

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