Carbon emissions from the aviation sector are growing and are difficult to abate, so there is a need to develop renewable feedstocks that can produce sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs). One potential feedstock is from the plant Brassica carinata (carinata) (genome = BC), a close relative of canola (genome = AC). Carinata seed oil contains erucic acid which makes the oil unsuitable for use as a food oil but ideal as an oil for processing into a certified SAF. To avoid food and fuel land use competition, it would be ideal to grow carinata as a cover crop, but carinata has late maturity, limiting the feasibility of double cropping. To improve the timing of carinata maturity we are developing genetic transformation and gene-editing technologies to introduce SDN-1 mutations into genes controlling flowering-time and maturity. Additionally, we are assessing the genetic diversity of maturity and other key agronomic traits in a diversity set of field-grown carinata. From this set we have been characterising the photoperiodic and vernalisation response of flowering-time of selected accessions in controlled growth cabinets. We aim to generate carinata cultivars with early maturity, thus enabling it to be deployed as a cover crop, maximising the amount of crop land to which carinata can be sustainably grown.