Another great opportunity in growing canola oil plant

Crop scientists are calling on more smallholder farmers to take up canola oil plant cultivation, noting it is both significant for their household use and has a guaranteed market.
The demand for the vegetable oil shot up after Baking, Cooking and Spreads –a wing of Unilever Ltd – adopted it for processing some of its products.
Canola, a flower like plant of the cabbage family, takes between 80-150 days to mature, therefore, can be rotated with other common garden crops, the scientists said.
Dr Lusike Wasilwa, Head of Horticulture and Industrial Crops Research at Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Institute, said farmers can process canola seeds at household into cooking oil.
“Unilever is currently the biggest buyer of canola seeds from our farmers, therefore, there is a big opportunity. The oil is among the ingredients used in Blue Band margarine processing,” Dr Wasilwa said, adding KALRO has developed about 14 varieties of canola.
The oil plant, which contains Omega3 and Omega 6 vitamins vital for brain development, grows in both high altitude and drought-tolerant areas, the researcher said.
KALRO, Unilever, Scaling up Nutrition and World Food Programme are currently in a campaign to raise awareness on nutrition under the ‘Good Breakfast Alliance’ umbrella. Olympic gold medalist and world record breaker David Rudisha is the campaign’s ambassador.