By E. M. Morrison

Sunflower growers are hoping to sell more oil through a new sunflower hybrid designed especially for commercial frying.

NuSun, developed with traditional breeding methods, produces an oil low in saturated fat. The oil remains stable at high temperatures, making it ideal for commercial frying. Sunflower growers hope these traits will increase domestic demand for sunflower oil, boosting acreage and expanding the $4.5 billion sunflower industry.

Sunflowers, worth about $666 million at the farm gate, are mainly an export crop. Yet the potential domestic market for NuSun is huge. The U.S. snack food industry uses more than one billion pounds of vegetable oil each year; the restaurant and food service sectors use another billion.

These industries are responding to consumer demand for low saturated fat, says Max Norris, AURI oils scientist. New food labeling rules could further lift NuSun’s appeal for health-conscious Americans, he says.

Unlike some commercial frying oils, NuSun does not require hydrogenation, a process that stabilizes oil but also creates trans fatty acids. Trans fats may be associated with higher serum cholesterol.

Eliminating hydrogenation also saves about two cents a pound in refining costs, says Larry Kleingartner, director of the National Sunflower Association. That means there could be a small premium for growing NuSun. Late last fall, for example, sunflower oil processors were offering premiums of 40 cents per hundredweight on NuSun contracts, according to Kleingartner.

“We think demand for NuSun will be very strong,” Kleingartner says. In 1999, NuSun varieties represented about a quarter of the country’s two million acres of oil sunflowers. “We hope to double that in 2000,” Kleingartner says.