Objective
This Concerted Action seeks to collate and evaluate existing information on crop development, production potential, oil composition and quality, oil extraction and industrial applications of the species Euphorbia lagascae. It will assess the suitability of Euphorbia lagascae for commercialisation to the benefit of European agriculture and the oleochemical industry and prepare a development programme to overcome current limitations and fully develop commercially sustainable applications for the crop.
These objectives will be achieved by bringing together leading specialists from industry, research institutes and universities, from 5 EU countries and 1g organisations, who have working experience of the crop or related knowledge of oilseed crops in the production, processing and marketing sectors. Two workshops will be organised to review current knowledge, summarise the information presented, identify gaps in current understanding and after discussion, propose strategies for future research leading to development.
The seed of Euphorbia lagascae contains up to 50% oil of which up to 60% is vernolic acid. Potential uses of the oil include the areas of coatings, lubricants and plastics. Vernolic acid, the C:18 epoxy fatty acid, has potential uses as a drying solvent in alkyd resin paints. Paints formulated with vernolic acid would greatly reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) air pollution that occurs with volatilization of alkyd resins in conventional paints. In the United States, ammendments to clean air acts are calling for reductions in vocs. The development of the species from a wild to a domesticated species ls very recent and two EC RT&D projects (SONCA and VOSFA) have included some study of the species. The seed is naturally dehiscence, but progress has been made in developing non-shattering material. Evaluation in northern and southern Europe has confirmed its high oil production potential (yields up to 2.5t/ha) and has highlighted differences in crop agronomy between locations. The crop contains an irritant component, but progress has been made in small scale oil extraction where steam pre-treatment may alleviate possible toxic effects. This CA would bring together research workers from Europe and USA to capture the current state of knowledge on all partners and stages in the production chain and develop sound and feasible long term development plans for commercialisation of the crop.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringtribologylubrication
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryvolatile organic compounds
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringair pollution engineering
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CON - Coordination of research actionsCoordinator
SO21 1AP MARTYR WORTHY WINCHESTER
United Kingdom