April 18, 2020 / www.IllinoisFarmerToday.com NEW USES S 3

By Phyllis CoulterIllinois Farmer Today

A t a time when farmers are urgently seeking ways to maximize profi t

in their corn-soybean rotations, university researchers in Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin, along with a startup company in Missouri, are working to devel-op pennycress into a crop that could give farmers more dollars.

The effort involves enhanc-ing pennycress’ characteristics to make it a better oilseed for fuel, a more palatable feed for livestock and a viable cover crop that Midwest farmers can sand-wich between corn harvest and soybean planting.

CoverCress Inc., a St. Louis-based company founded by former Monsanto employees in 2013, is using a version of pennycress in the search for processing and market options.

The company already has a buyer for the 2022 crop, said Cris Handel, vice president of strate-gy and operations.

Research fundingUniversity researchers are also

exploring the crop’s potential.Accelerating progress is $10

million in funding from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The fund-ing for the Integrated Pennycress Research Enabling Farm and En-

Photos courtesy John Sedbrook/Illinois State University

Illinois State University graduate students Maliheh Esfahanian and Hannah Potter work in the university’s CoverCress plots near Normal April 2. The new crop in the Midwest could be planted after corn and harvested before soybeans, bringing in an extra $50 to $70 per acre.

Bottles display pennycress wild seed, oil, seed meal and domesticated pennycress.

NEWFarmers could add dollars with pennycress

Farmers crop

ergy Resilience (IPREFER) proj-ect is to improve genetics and agronomic management and establish a supply chain, educa-tion and Extension networks to enhance pennycress adoption as a cash cover crop.

The researchers and devel-opers want to have two or three years’ experience before the seed is available for large-scale commercialization.

“We want to make sure the producer has a good fi rst ex-perience,” said Win Phippen, Western Illinois University agri-culture professor and IPREFER project director.

Even so, things are moving quickly.

Illinois State University plant biology and bioenergy professor John Sedbrook compares the development of pennycress to that of a crop in the same fam-ily — canola. Canola was devel-oped by improving the desirable traits and reducing undesirable traits of traditional rapeseed.

The cover crop could eventu-ally cover as many as 80 million cash crop acres in the central Corn Belt, he said. By 2030, the goal is a few million acres.

One trial is underway in Ohio, two in Wisconsin, two in Minne-sota and one or two in Illinois, depending on winterkill, said Phippen, who has research da-ta for pennycress grown at the Western Illinois University in Macomb going back to 2013. The best lines of each trial this year will be pursued.

Phippen has been develop-ing shorter-season varieties that will fi t between corn and soy-bean production, he said.

In Illinois and Missouri, the crop would be planted after corn, but further north in Min-nesota and Wisconsin where corn harvest is later, sequential planting may be the best option, with pennycress seeded aerially into a corn crop and soybeans planted into the cover crop be-fore it is harvested.

Adapting to demandSedbrook is gene editing to

take away some traits that give pennycress too much fi ber in order to increase the protein content and include better nu-trition, Phippen said. Research-ers are also working on reducing the pungent sulphur taste char-acteristic of the glucosinolate to make it more palatable for feed.

Fuel markets are being de-veloped, including aviation fu-el, Phippen said. Research into the supply chain will examine whether grain bins would have to be modifi ed to store the smaller seed. It might be as sim-ple as adding screening, he said.

As for processing, crush-ers could work in CoverCress in between soybean crushing. The idea is to “see if they could squeeze it in without major modifi cations,” he said.

For harvest, there has been success with commercial com-bines, perhaps just running a

little slower. Planting may be done at the same time as corn harvest and incorporated with vertical tillage. These tech-niques work better than drilling the small seeds and can be done with existing fi eld trips.

Finding founding farmersInitially, CoverCress will be

targeted towards energy mar-kets. CoverCress could generate up to 3 billion gallons of oil an-nually, Sedbrook said.

But research continues on making it a livestock feed source and a food-grade option.

Graduate students are working in the pennycress fi elds at Illi-nois State University, document-ing its growth. It’s expected to be harvested by May 15. Field days planned for April and May were cancelled because of COVID-19 pandemic rules — a disappoint-ment to the team hoping to drum up interest in the crop.

“The fi elds are most beautiful to see in April to mid-May,” Cover-Cress’ Handel said.

The company is recruiting farmers to join the “100 Found-ing Farmers Club” to plant the fi rst crop in 2021 with a harvest the next spring. Five hundred farmers will be needed to grow the new crop in 2022, Handel said.

Farmers can expect to earn about $50 per acre now and up to $70 as the crop is developed, Handel said. In contrast, most farmers growing cover crops spend $30 per acre.

The new crop can be grown with minimal input cost and with the same number of pass-es across the fi eld as farmers use now, plus an extra pass for spring fertilizer, Handel said.

Bottles display pennycress