PEORIA, Ill. — For bringing pennycress to the marketplace as a valuable industrial oilseed and cover crop, the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria was awarded the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Technology Transfer Award on April 5. Along with the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab in Morris, Minnesota, and the Plant Introduction Research Unit in Ames, Iowa, NCAUR — also known as the Peoria “Ag Lab,” guided the advancement of pennycress from an overwintering “nuisance” weed to a commercial crop prized for its high oil content.  

Research on pennycress began at the Peoria Ag Lab over 20 years ago when Dr. Terry Isbell, now retired, brought in a handful of pennycress seeds harvested from a local farm field, according to Steve Cermak, an organic chemist with NCAUR who has studied the oil-rich plant ever since.

“It came from a field next to another field of crops we were studying. It was brought back to the lab where we found out that the oil profile of pennycress was a lot like soybean oil. The following year we did a wild harvest of a farmer’s (pennycress) field and had some seed to get oil from, and started studying what uses we could get from that oil,” Cermak recalled.

Thus began a two-decade journey into pennycress research that included years of fall planting and spring harvesting, laboratory research, farmer field days and genetic trial-and-error that eventually identified pennycress oil as a viable aviation fuel supplement. Though Isbell has retired (and was recently inducted into the USDA-ARS Science Hall of Fame for his  leadership in the conception, design and execution of research related to an array of crops), NCAUR researchers are continuing to study pennycress oil in the development of renewable fuels. They are also starting to consider the plant’s potential for other uses.

“(Wild) pennycress has components that make it less than desirable for animal feed; it has an off-taste like a horseradish flavor. Processing the feed to remove the flavor made the cost of the feed more expensive, but through selective pennycress breeding there are now varieties of pennycress that can be grown for feed due to their low glucosinolate content,” said Cermak. 

There is also potential for human consumption of pennycress as a crucial protein source, especially for use in developing, food-insecure countries and for emergency relief efforts where protein-rich meal packets are distributed. “A lot of that work is also being geared towards those plant-based ‘meats,’” Cermak said, adding that the future for pennycress may primarily exist as a food source. 

“You can’t grow enough pennycress to replace all the petroleum we use with plant oil,” he said candidly. “There are markets that pennycress can meet, such as aviation fuel, but feeding people is probably going to be a challenge in the future. And when it comes down to feeding people or burning fuel, people need fuel for their bodies more.” 

Because of the crop’s winter hardiness and shorter life cycle, pennycress has advantages over other oilseeds for off-season production during the Midwestern winter months, and is domesticated to fit into the Midwest’s conventional agricultural system. ARS scientists worked with farmers and growers to demonstrate that pennycress can be added to their crop rotation without harming other crops.

As a result of work done at NCAUR, there is now a viable market for pennycress in the Midwest. CoverCress, a St. Louis-based company founded in part by former NCAUR employees, became the first successful company to support the regional pennycress industry. 

“As things have moved along more and more people have become interested in it, so now there are pennycress breeders, universities and research groups and someone along the entire chain looking at something related to pennycress. It’s still a small team, but research is going on. We just don’t have the backing that other successful crops have at this point,” said Cermak.

“Farmers are adapting to growing pennycress, and there is a lot of education going on. This is a new market that’s not competing with other crops that you can make money on. But introducing something new to the farm can be somewhat of a challenge, especially when you are asking a farmer to put a weed on their field that they may have used Roundup on in the past.”

Most recently, pennycress is being touted as a reliable, low-cost cover crop that is highly adaptable to varied soil and weather conditions. The plant also provides environmental benefits, according to Cermak. “Having pennycress as a cover crop you’re going to have less run-off, it retains the nitrogen in the soil and prevents erosion into the rivers. The environmental benefits are a plus to producing pennycress,” he said.

According to a USDA news release, with the use of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and Material Transfer Research Agreement (MTRA), the Peoria researchers were able to utilize the United States National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) and the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) system to publicly release two new pennycress germplasms lines, allowing parties interested in the advancement of pennycress to obtain seeds either for seed production or to use materials in their own pennycress breeding programs.

“This has been a shared success by ARS,” said Cermak. “We did our work at the beginning and are still working with pennycress, but now there are new companies out there doing their own research at their own expense. This was driven by research done by ARS-USDA.”