The goal of this phase II effort is to develop covercress as a commercially viable cover crop for US agriculture

Covercress is a winter cover cropwith modified composition based onfield pennycress (to make IT canola-like) that is targeted towards corn-SOY rotation farmers in the american midwest. The unique feature of covercressis that IT doubles as a cash crop providing $50-70/acre in net returns to the farmer. This gives farmers a financial incentive to adopt a cover crop strategy because IT more than offsets the cost of planting and harvesting the cover crop while providing environmental benefits. Cover crops capture and sequester atmospheric carbon prevent soil erosion nutrient runoff and reduce pesticide use and weed and disease emergence. Additionally covercress is ready to harvest in late may prior to soybean planting and can be harvested using a standard soybean combine. We estimate that covercress can bring a potential $200-300/acre in economic value to the US economyfrom the 35 million acres of corn-SOY farmland in the midwest about $7 billion overall. We expect this value to grow through improved covercress varieties with disease resistance greater yields improved composition and climate hardiness. This project addresses the need to develop pennycress as a commercially viable cover crop for US agriculture. Pennycress is susceptible to sclerotinia root ROT and alternaria leaf spot fungal diseases.high disease pressure can be devastating to crops lack appropriate disease-resistance package such as covercress today. We have observed dramatic reduction in field stands and yields in spring of 2017 when a warm winter in midwest resulted in a significant build-up of fungal spores count in the soil. We have isolated and characterized commercially relevant fungal isolates from the fields and aim to use the tools of modern biology to rapidly build sustainable disease resistance traits leveraging the knowledge obtained in other plants such as canola andarabidopsis. The success of this project will result in development of disease-resistant pennycress germplasm that when planted on millions of acres will retain crop yield even under high disease pressure. The project will use antifungal technology based on potent fungal inhibitory peptides and gene transfer or genome editing technology to develop genetically improved pennycress that is resistant to fungal diseases. We also aim to identify natural sources of resistance and take advantage of corresponding loci using conventional breeding.cover crops are an excellent solution to agricultural sustainability problems. Nevertheless due to economic reasons only about 5% of farmers use them to protect their farmland between growing seasons. Most farmers are not convinced that the modestly increased yield of the following cash crop such as corn or SOY will enable them to recoup the investment in planting and removing the cover crop. As a result several previous attempts at promoting adoption of new cover crops among farmers have failed. The lack of such economic incentive has been identified as one of the main barriers to wider adoption of cover crops.covercress INC. Is developing field pennycress with improved composition as a unique cover crop that doubles as an oilseed cash crop. Pennycress seeds typically have high oil content (~2X of soybean) with ultra-low saturated FAT content (