Community assembly of insects in pennycress, a novel winter cash cover crop

Winter cover crops are critical for maintaining soil integrity and managing nitrate nitrogen and phosphorus losses in Midwestern cropping systems. Despite clear benefits, cover crops have received limited adoption, in large part due to a lack of direct grower profit. One new and novel cover crop, pennycress (Thlaspi arvense), shows promise to address this need by providing a profitable, low-input, winter cash crop option for growers, which can be harvested for biofuel and feedstock. Little, however, is known about the insect community composition of this crop when adopted at large scales. Here we report the first years’ worth of data examining herbivores, predators, and pollinators present in T. arvense. We also examine differences between wild-type pennycress and newly developed domesticated varieties.