he oil yield of corn is so low, why is corn germ oil so cheap?

The crops we grow are basically divided into food crops and oil crops. As the name suggests, the main use of food crops is to eat as food, and the main use of oil crops is to extract edible oil. But food crops, although called food, do not mean that their use is only food.

The typical one is corn. When we visit the supermarket, we often see the corn germ oil. Of course, this is the oil extracted from the corn. Let’s take a closer look at the anatomical structure of the corn kernel in the above picture. Most of them are endosperm, and only a little bit on the upper right belongs to the germ. It is conceivable that if the oil is extracted from corn, the oil yield will not be high.

According to estimates, the fat content of corn germ is about 30%, but even a little bit of germ accounts for 80% of the fat content of the whole kernel. However, because the overall fat content of corn is only 4.3%, it is obviously not suitable if the whole oil is pressed.

However, for the germ, its oil content is really not low, although the difference between the fat content of peanuts is 50% and the oil content of rapeseed rape is 45%, but compared with 18% of soybeans, even A little higher. Of course, the extraction of edible oil is naturally more appropriate.

For corn germ, although the overall proportion of corn is small, but the other parts of corn are obviously not useless. If the role of corn is only used to extract oil, referring to the oil yield of corn, I am afraid that every pound of corn The price of germ oil is five or six times higher than that of peanut oil, so no one can afford it.

However, in addition to some of the corn germ refining, the rest of the germ and seed coat can be used as feed, and corn starch can be extracted. Of course, it can also be processed through deep processing of ethanol gasoline. From this perspective, corn refining can only be said to be corn scrap. Utilization, and the main use of corn is naturally processed in feed and industrial ethanol.

Moreover, the price of corn in China is indeed relatively cheap. Even the recent rapid increase in corn price is only a dollar per kilogram. The cost is low and corn germ oil is an additional benefit of corn ancillary products processing. Natural corn germ oil The price will not be higher.

This also shows that if we only focus on corn germ oil and ignore the use of other parts of corn to assess its value, it is obviously unfair and cannot be accurately evaluated. The value of things must be considered comprehensively in order to evaluate its value more accurately.