TBO's and alternate sources of oils

Abstract

Oils are triglycerides of glycerol with free fatty acids. The major source of edible oils in agriculture is from the seeds of crops like soya, groundnuts, rapeseed (mustard), sesame, sunflower, safflower etc. Tree-Borne Oilseeds, commonly called TBO`s, are not considered as sources of edible oilseeds, except for oil palm and coconut, and hence do not occupy an important place in the highly commoditized edible oil markets. However, they do have the potential to play major roles in agri-business due to several alternative uses they have, the most important of which is as raw material for production of bio-diesel, an environment-friendly substitute for petro-diesel, which is by far the highest used liquid petroleum fuel in transport and industry sectors. Some of the more potential TBO species are pongamia, simarouba, mahua, neem, jatropha, sal etc.