Rapeseed: Characteristics
How breeders turned an industrial oil into canola
What this tab covers The supply and physical characteristics of the commodity. Supply: current production, inventories and stocks, capacity utilisation, geographic and producer concentration, how fast supply responds to price, the project pipeline and capital spending, and logistics and export flows. Material: the physical and chemical properties that set its grade, price and end uses (for example purity and conductivity for metals, API gravity, sulfur and energy content for fuels, moisture, protein and fibre quality for crops).Supply volume characteristics
| Characteristic | Figure | What it means | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current production volume | about 87.9 Mt (FAOSTAT 2024); 96.0 Mt in 2025/26 and 99.6 Mt forecast for 2026/27 | Canada (canola), the EU, China, India (mustard) and Australia lead. India grew 13.77 Mt of rapeseed-mustard in 2025-26 (3rd advance estimate). | FAOSTAT 2024; USDA PSD; Ministry of Agriculture |
| Inventory and stock levels | world ending stocks 11.6 Mt forecast for 2026/27, 11.8% of use, about 43 days | Canada and the EU hold about 2.1-2.2 Mt each; China about 3.9 Mt. India holds about 0.5 Mt and no strategic reserve; NAFED buys mustard at MSP (Rs 6,200/quintal in RMS 2026-27) when mandi prices fall. | USDA PSD; Government of India MSP |
| Capacity utilisation | not published as a world series | About 96% of rapeseed use is crushed (90.1 Mt of 94.1 Mt in 2025/26). India's crush was 10.75 Mt in 2025/26, split between solvent plants and thousands of small expellers (kolhus); no utilisation series is published. | USDA PSD |
| Geographic and producer concentration | top country Canada 21.9%, top-3 (Canada, China, India) 56.2%, HHI 1,239 (2024); exports: Canada 33.3%, top-3 70.6% of value | China (27.5%) and Germany (22.5%) take half of import value. Richardson, Viterra (Bunge), Cargill, ADM and LDC dominate Canadian handling and crushing. | FAOSTAT 2024; UN Comtrade 2024 |
| Supply elasticity | short-run moderate: annual crop; winter rapeseed must be sown a year before harvest | Canadian and Australian farmers switch area between canola, wheat and barley each season. EU winter rapeseed is committed in August-September for harvest the next summer, so it responds with a lag. | USDA; industry practice |
| Project pipeline and CapEx | world output forecast up 3.7% to 99.6 Mt in 2026/27; crush expansions in Canada for renewable diesel | India's mustard crop rose from 12.67 Mt (2024-25) to 13.77 Mt (2025-26) under the National Mission on Edible Oils. Plant-level crush capacity figures are not in the sources used. | USDA PSD; Ministry of Agriculture |
| Logistics and export flows | about 19.4 Mt of seed exported in 2025/26, about 20% of output | Routes: Canadian prairies by rail to Vancouver for China and Japan; Australia from Western Australia and NSW to the EU and Asia; Ukraine through Black Sea ports. Chokepoints: Canadian rail capacity, Chinese trade actions on Canadian canola, war risk in the Black Sea. | USDA PSD; UN Comtrade 2024 |
Material characteristics Agricultural / soft commodity
Rapeseed is crushed for oil (about 40% of seed weight) and protein meal. Canola is rapeseed bred for low erucic acid in the oil and low glucosinolates in the meal, which makes the oil fit for food and the meal fit for feed. Indian mustard keeps high erucic acid and pungency, prized in kachi ghani oil. Moisture and green seed set the grade.
| Property | Value / specification | Why it matters | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erucic acid (oil) | canola: less than 2% of fatty acids; Indian mustard about 40-50% | Defines canola; high erucic oil is restricted in some food markets | Canola Council of Canada; Codex Standard 210-1999 (indicative) |
| Glucosinolates (meal) | canola: less than 30 micromoles per gram of meal | Low levels let the meal be fed to pigs and poultry | Canola Council of Canada |
| Oil content | about 42-45% for canola; about 38% oil recovery in India's crush | Sets crush margin | USDA PSD extraction rates (indicative) |
| Moisture | at most 10.0% to be graded dry in Canada | Damp seed heats and spoils fast because of its high oil | Canadian Grain Commission |
| Distinctly green seed | at most 2.0% for Canola No. 1 | Green seed gives dark, chlorophyll-rich oil that is costly to bleach | Canadian Grain Commission |
| Pungency (allyl isothiocyanate) | kept in Indian kachi ghani mustard oil | Indian consumers pay for pungent cold-pressed oil | BIS / FSSAI mustard oil standards (indicative) |