In this study, response surface methodology was applied to maximize production of erucic acid from lipase catalyzed mustard oil hydrolysis. Regioselective porcine pancreas lipase was used as catalyst. A quadratic model was developed by applying 2(4) full factorial central composite design. The optimal conditions obtained on numerical optimization of this model were; temperature 24.2 degrees C, pH 8.70, enzyme concentration 2.71 mg/g oil and buffer concentration 1.25 g/g oil. Maximum response, i.e., 'percentage of total erucic acid formed' was 95.5% in 6h, much better than the conversion obtained by earlier single variable optimization method. The two most significant variables were pH and buffer concentration. Interaction between temperature and buffer concentration also had significant effect. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.