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A professor of plant breeding with Western Illinois University says advancements in pennycress genetic research are leading it closer to becoming a commercial crop option for farmers.
Dr. Win Phippen tells Brownfield, “Ever since 2009, we’ve had an active breeding program to start focusing on what agronomic traits were needed in pennycress to essentially domesticate it and make it into a commercial entity,” he says.
He says the goal is to develop a fall-seeded crop that can be used in production of sustainable aviation fuel and livestock feed.
“It’s similar to canola, but canola is a primary crop. It’s got to be grown during this summer season.” He says, “Pennycress, on the other hand, actually is planted after the primary crop, providing a nice green cover on your farm. Pennycress will be in full bloom and harvestable by the end of May. It’s completely off-season production.”
Phippen says commercialized pennycress, which is called CoverCress and owned by Bayer, has performed well in its central Illinois rollout, and researchers are making advancements to make the crop hardy to a variety of other climates.
“We have a collection of about 800 wild types of pennycress, and it’s kind of neat to be able to collect that, what we call wild germ plasm, and identify maybe some interesting traits that we could use in the commercial breeding program,” he says.
He says the latest advancements in pennycress research will be on display at a field day at Western Illinois University on May 22nd.
“CoverCress will have some of its employees up here talking about the commercialization efforts, but we’ll also have some live demonstrations.” He says, “We’ll actually have a screw press running, so you actually can see us make oil from the seed, and see the seed meal production, and some of the other neat technologies we’ve developed.”
