linguistic:translation, structural:summarization
History of the cultivars

In 1973, Canadian agricultural scientists launched a marketing campaign to promote canola consumption. Seed, oil, and protein meal derived from rapeseed cultivars which are low in erucic acid and low in glucosinolates was originally registered as a trademark, in 1978, of the Canola Council of Canada, as "canola". Canola is now a generic term for edible varieties of rapeseed, but is still officially defined in Canada as rapeseed oil that "must contain less than 2% erucic acid and less than 30 μmol of glucosinolates per gram of air-dried oil-free meal." In the 1980s decreasing atmospheric sulphur inputs to Northern European soils in connection with a less efficient internal use of sulphur in the metabolism of the newly bred low-glucosinolate varieties (00-varieties) resulted in an increased appearance of white flowering, a highly specific symptom of sulphur deficiency, in rapeseed crops which during the official variety assessment procedures was wrongly attributed to a genetic inhomogeneity ("Canadian blood").

The anticipated damages of wild animals caused by foraging on 00-oilseed rape crops was caused by a shift of the animals diet towards increased uptake protein and sulphur containing metabolites at the expense of fibers, but not to specific features of the genetically altered 00-varieties.

Following the European Parliament's Transport Biofuels Directive in 2003 promoting the use of biofuels, the cultivation of winter rapeseed increased dramatically in Europe.

Bayer Cropscience, in collaboration with BGI-Shenzhen, China, KeyGene, the Netherlands, and the University of Queensland, Australia, announced it had sequenced the entire genome of B. napus and its constituent genomes present in B. rapa and B. oleracea in 2009. The "A" genome component of the amphidiploid rapeseed species B. napus has been sequenced by the Multinational Brassica Genome Project.

A genetically modified variety of rapeseed was developed in 1998, engineered for glyphosate tolerance, and is considered to be the most disease- and drought-resistant canola. By 2009, 90% of the rapeseed crops planted in Canada were of this sort.