As in the case of other oil crops, there has been increasing inter-
est in manipulating the fatty acid composition of sunflower oil to
produce oils with new properties and better performance for dif-
ferent applications. In this regard, sunflower has been differently
affected by the biotechnology revolution that has taken place in
the last 20 years. Thus, oil crops like rapeseed or soybean have
been subject to many modifications and improvements through
the application of genetic engineering. These manipulations
involved the transfer of genes from other species or modification
of the expression levels of endogenous genes by means of genetic
transformation [4]. This has produced a variety of new lines with
improved agronomical traits like resistance to herbicides and dif-
ferent oil compositions, varying from highly saturated oils to oils
enriched in x-3 very long chain fatty acids [5–8]. This revolution
has taken place in a climate of some public controversy (especially
in Europe) where there has been concern of the potential impact of
genetically modified products (GMOs) on human health and natu-
ral ecosystems. Thus, in the labeling of food in Europe and in many
places of Asia it is necessary to declare the presence of transgenic
material in the corresponding formulations. In this regard, sun-
flower has not yet arrived into the GMO era. The reason is that sun-
flower is recalcitrant to transformation by means of Agrobacterium
infection and is a plant very difficult to regenerate from cell cul-
tures. Few advances have been made on transformation (either
by floral dip or embryo infiltration) so there are no transgenic sun-
flower lines for commercial exploitation at the present time.
However, these facts have not limited the improvement of sun-
flower lines using other techniques. Thus, sunflower is a plant easy
to mutagenize by both physical and chemical methods. So, excel-
lent results have been reported by using ethylmethane sulfonate
or sodium azide to produce mutagenized populations of sunflower