title: New approaches to facilitate rapid domestication of a wild plant to an oilseed crop: example pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.).
abstract: Oilseed crops are sources of oils and seed meal having a multitude of uses. While the domestication of soybean and rapeseed took extended periods of time, new genome-based techniques have ushered in an era where crop domestication can occur rapidly. One attractive target for rapid domestication is the winter annual plant Field Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.; pennycress; Brassicaceae). Pennycress grows widespread throughout temperate regions of the world and could serve as a winter oilseed-producing cover crop. If grown throughout the USA Midwest Corn Belt, for example, pennycress could produce as much as 840L/ha oils and 1470kg/ha press-cake annually on 16 million hectares of farmland currently left fallow during the fall through spring months. However, wild pennycress strains have inconsistent germination and stand establishment, un-optimized maturity for a given growth zone, suboptimal oils and meal quality for biofuels and food production, and significant harvest loss due to pod shatter. In this review, we describe the virtues and current shortcomings of pennycress and discuss how knowledge from studying Arabidopsis thaliana and other Brassicas, in combination with the advent of affordable next generation sequencing, can bring about the rapid domestication and improvement of pennycress and other crops.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Campus Box 4120, Normal, IL 61790 USA. Electronic address: jcsedbr@ilstu.edu.
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Sedbrook
authors.affiliation: School of Agriculture, Western Illinois University, 1 University Circle, Macomb, IL 61455, USA.
authors.forename: Winthrop B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Phippen
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota, 1445 Gortner Avenue, 250 Biological Sciences Center, Saint Paul, MN 55108, USA.
authors.forename: M David
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Marks
mesh_terms: D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D010641:Phenotype; D010938:Plant Oils / Q000378:metabolism*; D012639:Seeds / Q000378:metabolism*; D031227:Thlaspi / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D010938:Plant Oils
keywords: Domestication; Next generation sequencing; Oilseed; Pennycress; TILLING; Thlaspi arvense