Huiles et corps gras des Pays du Sud et lipochimie

During the last decades the oleochemistry has gradually flooded our everyday life through a mass of products and applications. This is mainly due to the wide structural diversity and reactivity of fatty acids and the growing demand for bio-sourced goods. Today, almost one quarter of the global vegetable oil production is dedicated to nonfood applications, the contribution of animal fats being much more modest. Excepted biodiesels, the chemical applications of tropical edible oils depend on their fatty acids composition: lauric oils (coconut and palm kernel) and palm stearin will be mostly converted into surface actives ingredients while unsaturated oils rather will be subjected to double bond functionalization or cracking. Alongside of major vegetable oils only a few non-edible tropical oils are exclusively intended to oleochemistry such as Castor and Jatropha. Some other non-food oilseed crops (Cuphea, Lesquerella, Vernonia, black mustard. . .) are promising but further researches are still needed for their development in Southern Countries. In the future, the production increase of major vegetable oils and the development of new ones will face many challenges relating to environmental issues, competition between food and non-food uses and between non-food applications themselves.