Mutant and Tilling Populations of Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense), a New Model Plant and Oilseed Winter Annual Cover Crop

Pennycress (Thlapsi arvense) is a Brassica species related to Arabidopsis and rapeseed canola that is being developed as a new winter annual oilseed cover crop to be grown throughout the U.S. Midwest Corn Belt, planted in the fall at the time of corn harvest and harvested in the spring in time to plant soybeans (Sedbrook et al., 2014). Pennycress could also serve as a useful model system, comparable and complementary to Arabidopsis, for answering agronomic or environmental response questions or in instances where larger cell sizes or greater quantities of tissue would be advantageous. Pennycress grows well alongside Arabidopsis as well as in tilled fields, has a relatively small diploid genome that has been sequenced (Dorn et al., 2015), and is easily genetically transformed using an Agrobacterium-mediated vacuum infiltration floral dip method (McGinn et al., in preparation). To facilitate the adoption of pennycress, we have generated large EMS and fast neutron mutant populations of both spring-type and winter-type pennycress accessions, and are in the process of establishing Targeted Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes (TILLING) platforms for performing reverse genetic screens to identify mutations in genes of interest. Initial forward genetic screens have identified a variety of developmental and morphological mutants, many of which look similar to those previously reported in Arabidopsis. Moreover, we have identified a number of mutations that could improve agronomic attributes of pennycress including reduced seed dormancy, reduced pod shatter, increased seed size, and early senescence. For this poster, we will provide background information on pennycress as well as information on the TILLING platform and a sampling of the mutants and underlying mutations that have been identified.

Sedbrook, J.C., Phippen, W.B., and Marks, M.D. (2014) New approaches to facilitate rapid domestication of a wild plant to an oilseed crop: example pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.). Plant Science 227: 122-132.

Dorn, K.M., Fankhauser, J.D., Wyse, D.L., and Marks, M.D. (2015) A draft genome of field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) provides tools for the domestication of a new winter biofuel crop. DNA Research (doi: 10.1093/dnares/dsu045).