| Abstract: | After more than three years the internet‐based database “Seed Oil Fatty Acids” (SOFA) is available again (http://sofa.mri.bund.de) free of charge after registration. This database is a unique collection of information about the fatty acid composition of wild plant seeds. The data were collected from the appropriate pharmaceutical, botanical and chemical literature over a period of more than 40 years. With financial assistance from the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection via the lead partner Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR) the new database system based on mySQL and PHP as source language was created. Currently more than 18.000 different tables with about 130.000 individual data sets are searchable from the database. Additionally the database contains about 600 different fatty acids with more than 2.500 synonyms. The search for a defined (e. g. unusual or technically interesting) fatty acid or plant (family, genus, species) which contains this fatty acid is possible online. This search can be done by use of synonyms for the fatty acid (trivial name, systematic name) but also by using substructures of the fatty acid defined by an alpha‐numeric delta‐notation. It is possible to combine the search for different fatty acids by Boolean operators such as “AND” and “OR”. This paper gives an overview about the application of the different search forms and provides search examples. |
