A Brief History of Canola Genetic Gains: From Classical Breeding to Genome Editing

Canola exemplifies the transformation of a crop from industrial use to a globally significant edible oilseed through sustained genetic and biotechnological innovation. Historically, rapeseed was characterized by high erucic acid and glucosinolate contents, restricting its use primarily to industrial applications. However, classical breeding efforts in the 1970s successfully developed 'double-low' canola varieties, significantly reducing erucic acid and glucosinolate levels, thus establishing canola as a safe and nutritious food-grade oil. Subsequent advancements, including the introduction of hybrid cultivars, markedly enhanced seed yields, while mutation breeding and marker-assisted selection refined key agronomic traits such as lodging tolerance and disease resistance. Later, biotechnology breakthroughs expanded canola's versatility, leading to specialty oils with tailored fatty-acid profiles, for example, high-laurate oils for industrial applications and omega-3 enriched oils for nutritional purposes, as well as herbicide-tolerant cultivars that simplified weed management. More recently, genome-editing technologies, notably CRISPR/Cas9, have accelerated trait improvement by precisely modifying oil composition and significantly enhancing pod shatter resistance. This review synthesizes major genetic and breeding milestones that collectively shaped modern canola, highlights ongoing challenges associated with its complex polyploid genome, and discusses how emerging approaches, including multi-omics integration, precision genome editing, and artificial intelligence, offer promising strategies to further enhance canola productivity and sustainability.