Camelina sativa
| Camelina | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Rosids |
| Order: | Brassicales |
| Family: | Brassicaceae |
| Genus: | Camelina |
| Species: | C. sativa |
| Binomial name | |
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Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz |
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Camelina sativa is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae and is usually known in English as camelina, gold-of-pleasure, or false flax, also occasionally wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame, and Siberian oilseed. It is native to Europe and to Central Asian areas. This plant is cultivated as oilseed crop mainly in Europe and in North America.
C. sativa has been traditionally cultivated as an oilseed crop to produce vegetable oil and animal feed. Ample archeological evidence shows it has been grown in Europe for at least 3,000 years. The earliest findsites include the Neolithic levels at Auvernier, Switzerland (dated to the second millennium BC), the Chalcolithic level at Pefkakia in Greece (dated to the third millennium BC), and Sucidava-Celei, Romania (circa 2200 BC). During the Bronze age and Iron age, it was an important agricultural crop in northern Greece beyond the current range of the olive. It apparently continued to be grown at the time of the Roman Empire, although its Greek and Latin names are not known. As early as 600 BC, it was being sown as a monoculture around the Rhine River Valley, and was thought to have spread mainly by coexisting as a weed with flax monocultures.
Until the 1940s, camelina was an important oil crop in eastern and central Europe, and currently has continued to be cultivated in a few parts of Europe for its seed oil. Camelina oil was used in oil lamps (until the modern harnessing of natural gas, propane, and electricity) and as an edible false flax oil. It was possibly brought to North America unintentionally as a weed with flaxseed, and has had limited commercial importance until modern times. Currently, the breeding potential is unexplored compared to other oilseeds commercially grown around the world.
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Wikipedia