ALINTERI JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE SCIENCES, cilt.30, sa.1, ss.70-76, 2016 (ESCI)
Oil plants play an important role in human or animal nutrition and are also an valuable source of raw material for industrial sector. They are also functional with the rich nutritional contents. Vegetable oil production in the world is covered from mainly palm oil and then soybean, rapeseed and sunflower. In Turkey, the majority of oilseed and vegetable oil production are obtained from sunflower. Besides cottonseed, soybean, rapeseed, safflower, olive and corn plants are used for producing vegetable oils. But the most cultivated and produced one is sunflower. The high edible oil quality of sunflower ensure more consumption. In Turkey, only sunflower meets 69% of production of vegetable oil, 84% of total oil consumption, 32% of total oil usage. Since the sunflower oil production does not meet the consumption, a large part of the sunflower oil demands are imported. The purpose of this review is to reveal the importance sunflower oil within oilseed plants and its role in overcoming oil deficiency in Turkey.