From Pervenets to our 87% lot

1976 — the mutation that changed the sunflower

At the V.S. Pustovoit Research Institute of Oil Crops (VNIIMK) in Krasnodar, researcher K.I. Soldatov — now recognised as the father of high-oleic sunflower — treated seeds of the variety VNIIMK 8931 with dimethyl sulphate (DMS), a chemical mutagen, using a solution of around 0.5%. The work unfolded over several years: in 1971 he obtained the first plants with around 60% oleic acid,and through repeated selection in successive generations 1973-1976he stabilised Pervenets — an open -pollinated varietythe world's first high-oleic, with 70-90% oleic acid in the oil, compared with just 15-40% (typically around 20%) in conventional sunflower.

The institute itself has a long history. It began in 1912 as a modest experimental field called "Kruglik", becoming a national institute (VNIIMK) in 1932. It bears the name of Academician Vasily Stepanovich Pustovoit,a pioneer who, decades before Soldatov's mutation, had already raised oil content in sunflower seed from 28-32% to 50-55% — an increase almost as remarkable as the leap to high-oleic, at the same institute. Today the VNIIMK network includes, besides its base in Krasnodar, the Donskaya, Sibirskaya and Armavirskaya experimental stations, the Rapeseed Research Institute in Lipetsk, and several elite seed production farms.

The name is no accident: in Russian,, "Pervenets" (Первенец) means "first-born" — fitting, since VNIIMK Krasnodar was a Russian institute (not Ukrainian), in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. Almost half a century later, virtually every high-oleic hybrid grown anywhere today — including the seed behind our bottle from Tălmăcel — traces back, like a family tree, to that single first-born of 1976.

The result was reported in the paper Chemical mutagenesis in sunflower breeding,presented at the International Sunflower Conference in Krasnodar in 1976. Since then, Pervenets has become the universal donor of the high-oleic trait: practically all high-oleic germplasm available in the world today descends from this one Soviet line.

From the archive — VNIIMK on record

According to a certificate issued by VNIIMK and signed by its director, V.P. Brejnik, the variety Pervenets was officially registered in 1977 and soon covered some 80.000 ha in the Krasnodar region. Based on it, Soviet industry launched the first commercial oil of its kind — „Kuban Oil for Salades” — officially recommended by the Gosplan Expert Committee as a substitute for imported olive oil. From Pervenets, VNIIMK later developed hybrids such as Kruiz (resistant to broomrape) Krasnodarets 885.

Source: VNIIMK certificate, signed by V.P. Brejnik, Director of the Institute..

Genetic mechanism — why it is considered "natural"

Conventional sunflower produces in the seed an enzyme called oleate desaturase (FAD2-1), which converts oleic acid (monounsaturated) into polyunsaturated fatty acids, principally linoleic acid. The more the enzyme works, the less oleic and the more linoleic the oil contains.

The Pervenets mutation switches off this very gene. At molecular level, research has shown that the mutation consists of a partial duplication of the FAD2-1gene region, which triggers silencing of its own gene (Lacombe et al., 2002; Schuppert et al., 2006). The enzyme is no longer produced, oleic acid is no longer converted, and it accumulates. Hence the high-oleic profile.

Three points are essential for the status of the product:

• It is the plant's own gene. No genetic material from another species has been introduced. The change concerns only the sunflower genome.
• The mutagen acted once, in 1976. Since then the trait has been inherited like any other (dominant monogenic inheritance), and there is no trace of the reagent in the plant or in the oil..
• The trait remains dependent on environment. Because the mutation silences the gene without destroying it entirely, the FAD2-1 promoter remains sensitive to growing conditions. Temperature during seed fill influences the final oleic percentage — which is why values vary from year to year and lot to lot. That is precisely why we state the actual measured percentage of each lot, not a fixed theoretical figure.

What percentage is officially "high oleic"?

Not every oil with a little more oleic acid than average can be called "high oleic" — the threshold is set by an international standard. Under Codex Alimentarius (standard CODEX-STAN 210-1999), the reference used by the European industry, a sunflower oil may bear the name "high oleic" only if it contains a minimum of 75% oleic acid (the accepted range being 75.0–90.7%). At 87% 87% in our lot, we sit comfortably towards the upper end of that range.

Interestingly, the Americans use a different, stricter threshold. National Sunflower Association (the US growers' association) defines "high oleic" as a minimum of 80% oleic acid — five percentage points higher than the reference used in Europe.

Din URSS spre Occident

The Pervenets genetic material reached the West in the early 1980s. A detail that matters legally: under the Soviet system, Soldatov had not patented the mutation — which left the field open in the West to protect derived lines. In the USA, breeder Gerhardt N. Fick (Sigco Research Inc.) used Pervenets germplasm to develop the first patent-protected high-oleic lines and oils: US 4.627.192 for seed and plants (filed 1984, granted 1986) and US 4.743.402 US 4,743,402 for oil (filed 1985, granted 1988), later licensed to industry. From the 1990s, high-oleic hybrids spread rapidly in the United States, Argentina, Europe and, later, Romania and the Black Sea basin.

Today, the major seed companies (Syngenta, Corteva/Pioneer, Limagrain, BASF and others) are no longer chasing just "more oleic". Their breeding programmes are multi-traita commercial hybrid must simultaneously combine high yield, high oil content in the seed, disease resistance (Phomopsis, Sclerotinia, downy mildew, broomrape/Orobanche), herbicide tolerance (Clearfield, Express systems) and stability of the oleic percentage under varying temperature conditions. Through marker-assisted selection and genomic selection, the oleic content of modern lines has risen to 89–93%, and newer mutations (gamma, EMS) are attempting to correct precisely the environmental instability of the old Pervenets mutation.

Timeline

Legal status in the EU — non-transgenic, exempt from GMO regulation

This is where the distinction that matters to the consumer is drawn. The Court of Justice of the European Union held in Case C-528/16 (judgment of 25 July 2018) that, on a technical reading, organisms obtained by mutagenesis fall within the definition of a GMO under Article 2(2) of Directive 2001/18/EC..

However, the same Directive, under Article 3(1) read in conjunction with Annex I B, expressly exempts mutagenesis techniques which have been conventionally used in a number of applications and have a long safety record.The Court limited the exemption precisely to those classical techniques — the category into which the 1976 chemical mutagenesis that produced Pervenets falls. [The new techniques of directed mutagenesis, by contrast, remain fully regulated as GMOs.]

The practical conclusion: high-oleic sunflower from the Pervenets lineage is not regulated, labelled or marketed as a GMO.It is a conventional, non-transgenic product.

International scientific recognition

In november 2018, the US Food and Drug AdministrationFDA, following a systematic review of the evidence, authorised a qualified health claim for edible oils containing at least 70% oleic acid (a category that explicitly includes high oleic sunflower oil). The approved wording refers to "supportive but not conclusive scientific evidence" suggesting a possible effect in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, provided that these oils replace fats high in saturated fatty acids.

We clarify the framework correctly: this is a US regulatory act, with no effect in the European Union.We mention it as a benchmark of scientific interest in this type of oil, not as a health claim about our own product.

Why dehulled and cold-pressed

Genetics provides the potential; processing determines the taste in the bottle. The seed hull contains wax and bitter, astringent compounds. That is why, in Tălmăcel, we use dehulled seeds before pressing: the resulting oil is finer, less astringent, with delicate nutty notes instead of a "hull" taste.

To this is added the intrinsic advantage of the high-oleic profile. Being low in polyunsaturated fatty acids, the oil generates, upon oxidation and frying, far fewer aldehydes and compounds associated with rancidity and intense "oily" notes. Sensory studies have shown that high-oleic sunflower oil (HOSO) exhibits one of the lowest intensities of "oily taste" when frying, compared with soybean, rapeseed, maize or palm olein.

Cold pressing preserves these qualities: no chemical refining, no high temperatures, with the aroma profile left intact. The combination of dehulling and cold pressing is precisely what distinguishes an artisanal high-oleic oil from the refined commodity on the supermarket shelf.

From Pervenets ("First born") to Tălmăcel

From the classic variety to today's bottle:

Nearly half a century of breeding lies behind a single bottle.We are carrying the story forward on a small scale: dehulled seed, cold pressing, and the actual percentage of each batch declared transparently.

Sources

• Soldatov, K.I. (1976). Chemical mutagenesis in sunflower breeding. Proc. 7th International Sunflower Conference, Krasnodar. (VNIIMK — Institutul „V.S. Pustovoit” de Cercetare a Culturilor Oleaginoase.)
• Istoricul și rețeaua actuală VNIIMK: vniimk.ru; ru.wikipedia.org.
• Performanța lui V.S. Pustovoit (creșterea masličității seminței de floarea-soarelui de la 28–32% la 50–55%): „VNIIMK — 110 ani în slujba industriei oleaginoase a Rusiei”, cyberleninka.ru.
• Lacombe, S. et al. (2002); Schuppert, G. et al. (2006) — caracterizarea moleculară a mutației Pervenets (duplicarea și silențierea genei FAD2-1).
• Curtea de Justiție a UE, cauza C-528/16, Confédération paysanne și alții, hotărârea din 25 iulie 2018; Directiva 2001/18/CE, art. 2 alin. (2), art. 3 alin. (1) și Anexa I B.
• FDA, Qualified Health Claim for Oleic Acid and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease, 19 noiembrie 2018.
• Brevete Fick / Sigco Research Inc.: US 4.627.192 (sămânță și plante, acordat 09.12.1986) și US 4.743.402 (ulei, acordat 10.05.1988), linii derivate din germoplasma Pervenets.
• Adeverință VNIIMK semnată V.P. Brejnik (arhivă proprie) — omologare Pervenets, difuzare în regiunea Krasnodar, hibrizii Kruiz și Krasnodarets 885.