Duckweed

Aquatic plant (47)
Duckweed (12)
Marsh plant (43)
Water lily (7)

Synopsis: Plants: Aquatic plants: Duckweed:

And drugs made in duckweed safflower and tobacco have progressed as far as clinical trials. However, making proteins with certain sugar patterns using these systems is still difficult or impossible.

You can then use the chicken manure to fertilize duckweed ponds use the duckweed to feed tilapia filter the tilapia water thru a gravel growbed use the gravel growbed to grow vegetables

Now the genome of Greater Duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) has given this miniscule plant's potential as a biofuel source a big boost.

Simple and primitive a duckweed plant consists of a single small kidney-shaped leaf about the size of a pencil-top eraser that floats on the surface of the water with a few thin roots underwater.

For example unlike plants on land duckweeds don't need to hold themselves upright or transport water from distant roots to their leaves so they're a relatively soft and pliable plant containing tiny amounts of woody material such as lignin and cellulose.

Also although they are small enough to grow in many environments unlike biofuel-producing microbes duckweed plants are large enough to harvest easily.

A thorough understanding of the genome and cellular mechanisms of S. polyrhiza could greatly enhance current efforts to recruit duckweed as a biofuel source.

Messing estimates that duckweed will be a viable biofuel source within the next five years and points to Ceres Energy Group in New jersey

which is already producing electricity from duckweed. Understanding which genes produce which traits will allow researchers to create new varieties of duckweed with enhanced biofuel traits such as increased reduction of cellulose or increased starch or even higher lipid production.

Starch can be used directly as a biofuel source and it can be converted to ethanol the way corn is converted currently to ethanol fuel

Drugs made in duckweed, safflower, and tobacco have progressed as far as clinical trials â oe

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