When a farmer plants a cover crop in between the year’s two cash crops, it protects and enriches the soil, but that off-season crop typically doesn’t yield a profitable harvest itself.
That’s where a plant such as CoverCress comes in. For six years, a team of scientists has been developing the new species based on the native pennycress plant. Not only will it function as a traditional winter cover crop, it will also serve as a cash crop similar to canola for animal feed, bioenergy or oil.
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