Pennycress （Thlaspi arvense L.） belongs to the Thlaspi genus of the Cruciferae family， which is a dual-role herb plant with both medical and food usages. Pennycress has strong ecological adaptability and can accumulate abundant oil in the seed， hence displaying great values in the resource development and utilization. In recent years， with the rapid progress made in the modern life science research， advantages of pennycress were broadly investigated， a variety of fundamental and application researches have thus been conducted. In this respect， the domestic reports about pennycress in China were mainly focused on the extraction of functional active substances and their clinical effects， while the studies developed abroad preferred to explore its ecological value in the agricultural production cycle and the lipid metabolism regulatory mechanisms. Numerous researches have both indicated that pennycress not only possess great potentials in the biodiesel preparation and support the oil supplement， but also could serve as a favorable candidate in the novel medicine development. Meanwhile， being benefited from the publishing of the whole genome information of pennycress， it has become possible to carry out the molecular breeding improvement. For example， the genome editing technology was successfully applied to alter the pennycress seed fatty acid composition to achieve a more desirable trait to meet the edible oil demand， not to mention the mining of other useful functional genes within pennycress that may assist the crop production and stress resistance amelioration. Metabolic engineering of the pennycress lipid property in order to develop novel vegetable oil， or even heterologously produce high-value fatty acid （e.g. nervonic acid etc.） has shown great prospect as one of the pennycress development directions. This paper therefore summarized and envisaged the recent progresses of the resource development and utilization and the lipid metabolic engineering on pennycress， aiming to provide reference for the study， popularization and application of pennycress in China.