Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biomass and Bioenergy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biombioe Research paper Turning a burden into an opportunity: Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.) a new oilseed crop for biofuel production Federica Zanetti a,∗ , Terry A. Isbell b , Russ W. Gesch c , Roque L. Evangelista b , Efthymia Alexopoulou d , Bryan Moser b , Andrea Monti a a University of Bologna, DISTAL, Viale G. Fanin 44, 40127, Bologna, Italy b USDA-ARS, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, Bio-Oils Research Units, 1815 N. University St, Peoria, IL, 61604, USA c USDA-ARS, North Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory, Morris, MN, 56267, USA d CRES, Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving, 19th km Marathonos Avenue, Pikermi, 19009, Greece ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Vegetable oil Biobased economy Biodiesel Marginal land Seeding rate Erucic acid ABSTRACT Recently, an “old weed”, pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.) has become an attractive non-food oilseed crop for Europe and the USA. Pennycress can be produced with existing farm equipment and infrastructure while being grown in the off-season between conventional commodity crops. The adaptation to marginal lands and the satisfactory seed yields make pennycress a viable alternative feedstock for biofuels. In the last decade, pennycress has been extensively studied as a potential oilseed crop in the USA, while receiving far less attention in Europe. Differences in climate and agricultural management between USA and Europe may not permit direct translation of pennycress agronomic knowledge across diverse environments. In the present study, sowing date and seeding rate of pennycress were evaluated in different European (Italy and Greece) and US (Minnesota and Illinois) locations to optimize site-specific production, and determine environmental influence on pennycress-derived biofuel. Pennycress productivity in- creased with seeding rate up to 1500 m -2 in Europe, but only to 672 m -2 in USA, while sowing in early autumn always improved yields. Seed yield of about 1 Mg ha-1 was achieved only in Greece, where adequate precipitation during the growing season was available. Seed yields were 250% and 140% higher in Greece and Italy, respectively, than Minnesota. Pennycress oil was suitable to convert into biofuel and its composition was influenced by growing environment. In Greece, polyunsaturated fatty acid content was 6% compared to Italy and Illinois. However, the oxidative stability of pennycress oil needs improvement to meet EU and US standards for biodiesel. 1. Introduction Plant lipids are valuable commodities having high versatility and world wide availability, being primarily used as food, but also as cosmetics in- gredients, cooking oils, industrial lubricants, chemical feedstock for soaps, detergents, polymers, biodiesel, and more recently as feedstock for jet fuels [1–3]. The demand for vegetable oil is continuously rising due to popula- tion growth and increased globalization. The proportion of vegetable oils converted to biobased applications is increasing annually [4] despite world plant lipid production remaining quite stable [5]. Recently, the biobased industry [6] is calling for highly efficient solutions in terms of land use and agricultural inputs, with minimal environmental impacts, thus opening the way to the identification and study of promising new non-food oilseed crops. Among other candidate species, pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.) has increasingly attracted the attention of the scientific community. The first attempt to evaluate pennycress as a potential oil crop dates back to 1944 [7], however, only since 2002 has it started to be consistently evaluated as a potential oilseed crop rather than a “noxious weed” [8]. This perception change in pennycress has led to less scientific interest of it as a “weed” (i.e., mainly research on propagation, persistence and survival of the species) and more interest as a viable agronomic crop, as indicated by recent re- search publications [9]. There is a growing interest in using pennycress for cropping system intensification, such as double and relay cropping [10], which has been demonstrated in both the USA [9] and Europe [11], aiming to possibly avoid/reduce land competition between food and non-food species. This has paved the way to growing a number of studies focused on pennycress as a potential new oilseed crop [12]. The identification of plant species able to fit into existing crop ro- tations as winter cover crops in temperate and Mediterranean climates, while also providing a profit to farmers, remains a challenge. At pre- sent, the Mediterranean farming systems mostly rely on very few cereal crops, very often on sole winter wheat, and unsustainable agricultural https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2019.105354 Received 9 November 2018; Received in revised form 9 August 2019; Accepted 17 September 2019 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: federica.zanetti5@unibo.it (F. Zanetti). Biomass and Bioenergy 130 (2019) 105354 0961-9534/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T