Integrated Pennycress Resilience Project (IPReP)
EMSL Project ID
61030
Abstract
Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) is under development as a winter annual oilseed bioenergy crop for the 80 million-acre U.S. Midwest Corn Belt and other temperate regions including the Pacific Northwest. Pennycress has unique attributes such as extreme cold tolerance and rapid spring growth. Off-season integration of domesticated pennycress varieties into existing corn and soybean acres would extend the growing season on established croplands, avoid displacement of food crops, and yield up to 3 billion gallons of seed oil annually. Pennycress oil has a fatty acid composition well-suited for conversion to biodiesel and biojet fuel. However, these first-generation varieties have limited genetic variation, which hampers their adaptability to extreme climates and resilience against environmental challenges including drought, heat, and flooding. We aim to integrate multi omics data layers derived from lab and field experiment to drive metabolic network modeling, including explainable-AI approaches to identify and confirm climate and environment-adaptive alleles to create and select high-resilience lines to fulfill future bioenergy need.
Project Details
Start Date
2023-11-13
End Date
N/A
Status
Active
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members