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De novo domestication

Novel crop rotation via de novo pennycress domestication

A new winter-rotation oilseed crop has been generated from a freeze-tolerant wild field pennycress by de novo domestication, reducing its glucosinolate and erucic acid contents, as well as its weediness, without a growth and yield penalty. Commercialization has resulted in a low-carbon-intensity intermediate crop, demonstrating a great potential for de novo domestication to create a new crop rotation paradigm for the optimized utilization of agricultural resources.

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Fig. 1: A newly domesticated offseason crop drives rotation system transition.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32425043), the Basic Research Project of Yazhouwan National Laboratory in 2023 and the Postdoctoral Science Project from Hainan Province (JY24BYKY03).

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Correspondence to Hong Yu.

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Zhang, J., Yu, H. Novel crop rotation via de novo pennycress domestication. Nat. Plants (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02228-5

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