在过去的几十年里，植物油变得越来越重要，在过去的25年里，世界油料作物产量翻了一番。油料作物越来越多地被用作食品、牲畜饲料和非食品工业应用的原材料。植物育种在支持这些发展方面发挥了重要作用
提高产量和含油量的育种可以提高单位面积的产油量，而提高油质的育种既提高了植物油的人类健康价值，也提高了特定油在特定工业应用中的适用性。此外，新开发的独特油质为农业生产和加工带来了新的机遇。从单子叶植物和双子叶植物中，油料作物已在不同的植物科中发展。因此，油料作物是一组高度多样化的物种，从短季一年生植物到寿命超过2000年的多年生植物。因此，用于油料作物改良的育种方法包括克隆育种、纯系育种、开放授粉群体改良以及杂交育种。特别是，育种程序和技术包括几乎所有的活动，从简单的大规模选择和杂交到专门的生物技术，如体外繁殖或基因工程。
油料作物育种是一部最先进的汇编，也是关于油料作物育种的主要参考文献，几十年来一直缺乏这本书。虽然本卷中积累的信息对植物育种者最为重要，但也为农学家、分子生物学家、生理学家、植物病理学家、食品科学家和大学学者提供了对各种油料作物物种进行比较处理的宝贵见解。油料作物育种有17章专门介绍特定油料作物品种的育种。大豆、向日葵、油菜等世界范围内分布的油料作物和相关的芸苔与棉籽、花生或蓖麻、多年生油棕、椰子和橄榄等热带和亚热带物种、红花、罂粟、油南瓜或玉米等具有区域重要性的次要油料作物，以及莱斯奎拉和茶等新油料作物并列出现。起源和驯化、品种群、遗传资源、主要成就和当前育种目标、育种方法、技术和生物技术，以及种子生产，取决于它们在特定作物中的相关性。
每一章都由各自领域的杰出专家撰写。只要有可能，来自不同机构或国家的作者就特定章节进行合作，这有助于拓宽和平衡对特定物种或主题的看法。
约翰·沃尔曼是奥地利维也纳人。他是维也纳自然资源和应用生命科学大学的副教授，教授植物育种课程。他的主要研究兴趣是大豆品质性状的遗传改良和小油料作物的预育种。约翰·沃尔曼（Johann Vollmann）是适应中欧条件的大豆和山茶种质资源的共同开发者。他还担任欧洲植物育种研究协会EUCARPIA的秘书长。
伊斯特万·拉詹在塞尔维亚的诺维萨德长大，并于1991年移居加拿大。他在安大略省圭尔夫市圭尔夫大学完成了油菜育种和生物技术博士学位。他是圭尔夫大学植物农业系的教授和大豆育种师，教授植物育种。感兴趣的主要领域是功能性食品和生物产品改良种子成分的遗传学，以及作物对大环境的适应。他在包括理论和应用遗传学在内的四种国际期刊的编辑委员会任职。他获得了多项研究奖，培养了13名研究生，开发了30个大豆品种。
Oil Crops
Vegetable oils have gained in importance during the past few decades resulting in the doubling of the world oil crop production in the last 25 years. Oil crops have been increasingly used as raw materials for food, livestock feed and non-food industrial applications. Plant breeding has played an essential role in supporting these developments
Breeding for higher yield and oil content allowed for an increase in oil production per unit area, whereas breeding for better oil quality has improved both the human health value of vegetable oils as well as the suitability of particular oils in specific industrial applications. Moreover, newly developed unique oil qualities are opening new opportunities in agricultural production and processing. Oil crop species have been developed in various botanical families from both the monocots and dicots. Thus, oil crops are a highly diverse set of species from short season annuals to perennials with a life span of over 2000 years. Consequently, breeding methods used for oil crop improvement include clonal breeding, pure line breeding, improvement of open-pollinated populations as well as hybrid breeding. In particular, the breeding procedures and techniques include almost every activity from simple mass selection and hybridization to specialized biotechnologies such as in vitro propagation or genetic engineering.
Oil Crops Breeding is a state-of-the-art compilation and a major reference text on oil crop breeding, which has been lacking for several decades. While the information accumulated in this volume is of primary interest to plant breeders, valuable insights are also offered to agronomists, molecular biologists, physiologists, plant pathologists, food scientists and university scholars from the comparative treatment of various oil crop species. Oil Crops Breeding presents 17 chapters devoted to the breeding of particular oil crop species. Oil crops with world-wide distribution such as soybean, sunflower, oilseed rape and related brassicas are presented side-by-side with tropical and subtropical species such as cotton seed, peanut or castor, the perennials oil palm, coconut and olive, minor oil crops of regional importance such as safflower, poppy, oil pumpkin or maize, and new oil crops such as lesquerella and cuphea. Origin and domestication, varietal groups, genetic resources, major achievements and current breeding goals, breeding methods, techniques and biotechnologies, and seed production are addressed depending on their relevance in a particular crop.
Each crop chapter has been written by outstanding experts in their respective fields. Whenever possible authors from different institutions or countries worked together on particular chapters, which contributed to broadened and well-balanced views on particular species or topics.
Johann Vollmann is a native of Vienna, Austria. He is teaching courses on plant breeding as an associate professor at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna. His main research interests are in the genetic improvement of quality characteristics of soybean and in pre-breeding of minor oil crops. Johann Vollmann has been a co-developer of soybean and camelina germplasm adapted to Central European conditions. He also served as a secretary general to EUCARPIA, the European Association for Research in Plant Breeding.
Istvan Rajcan grew up in Novi Sad, Serbia and moved to Canada in 1991. He completed his Ph.D. degree in canola breeding and biotechnology at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. He is a Professor and soybean breeder in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph and teaches plant breeding. Main areas of interest are genetics of modified seed composition for functional foods and bioproducts and crop adaptation to mega-environments. He serves on the editorial board four international journals including Theoretical and Applied Genetics. He has won several research awards, trained 13 graduate students and developed 30 soybean varieties.
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