diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 63da8c1c1a96..2f10812f9a59 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -55,6 +55,7 @@ Optional features:
 - `avro`: support for reading the [Apache Avro] format
 - `backtrace`: include backtrace information in error messages
 - `pyarrow`: conversions between PyArrow and DataFusion types
+- `serde`: enable arrow-schema's `serde` feature
 - `simd`: enable arrow-rs's manual `SIMD` kernels (requires Rust `nightly`)
 
 [apache avro]: https://avro.apache.org/
diff --git a/datafusion/core/Cargo.toml b/datafusion/core/Cargo.toml
index fa580c914ce2..30e0d005e92e 100644
--- a/datafusion/core/Cargo.toml
+++ b/datafusion/core/Cargo.toml
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@ encoding_expressions = ["datafusion-physical-expr/encoding_expressions"]
 force_hash_collisions = []
 pyarrow = ["datafusion-common/pyarrow"]
 regex_expressions = ["datafusion-physical-expr/regex_expressions", "datafusion-optimizer/regex_expressions"]
+serde = ["arrow-schema/serde"]
 simd = ["arrow/simd"]
 unicode_expressions = ["datafusion-physical-expr/unicode_expressions", "datafusion-optimizer/unicode_expressions", "datafusion-sql/unicode_expressions"]