18
Future Prospects of Duckweed
Research and Applications
Giang T. H. Vu, Paul Fourounjian, Wenqin Wang
and Xuan Hieu Cao
Abstract
The duckweeds have fascinated many generations of biologists since 1960s because of their
simplicity of body structure and extremely fast
vegetative reproduction. Since the beginning of
the era of plant molecular biology, duckweeds
have emerged as model plants with important
findings in basic research as well as plant-based
applications. Recent advances in the omic-tools
and techniques have rejuvenated research on
duckweeds, resulting in a fast accumulation of
genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic
resources to the field. This recent progress
enables us to use duckweeds to address biological questions related to stress physiology,
phytotoxicity, adaptive strategies of aquatic
plants and the molecular interactions between
aquatic microorganisms and plants. Throughout the past decades, unimaginably wide-range
applications of duckweeds like wastewater
purification, use of protein-rich biomass for
animal feed and human nutrition, use of
starch-rich biomass as source of renewable
energy and as factories for producing
plant-derived pharmaceuticals, to name a few,
have been in development, or laboratory scale.
We look forward to a deeper understanding of
these wonderful plants and many new functional technologies on the horizon.
18.1 Introduction
Not only arable fields are suitable for robust cultivation of crops. With a fast-growing global
population, the challenges of expanding demand
for resources need to be addressed by developing
new and alternative agricultural systems for production of food, feed, and raw materials. Fortunately, duckweeds (Lemnaceae) which are
productive and versatile aquatic monocot plants
offer tremendous and unique opportunities for
floating cultures under a wide range of conditions
Giang T. H. Vu, Paul Fourounjian—These authors
contributed equally to this work.
G. T. H. Vu
Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant
Research (IPK), Corrensstrasse 3, 06166
Gatersleben, Germany
P. Fourounjian
Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers
University, Piscataway 08854, USA
W. Wang
School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai
200240, China
X. H. Cao (&)
Institute of Biology/Plant Physiology,
Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg,
Weinbergweg 10, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
e-mail: xuan.cao@biologie.uni-halle.de
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
X. H. Cao et al. (eds.), The Duckweed Genomes, Compendium of Plant Genomes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11045-1_18
179
Future Prospects of Duckweed
Research and Applications
Giang T. H. Vu, Paul Fourounjian, Wenqin Wang
and Xuan Hieu Cao
Abstract
The duckweeds have fascinated many generations of biologists since 1960s because of their
simplicity of body structure and extremely fast
vegetative reproduction. Since the beginning of
the era of plant molecular biology, duckweeds
have emerged as model plants with important
findings in basic research as well as plant-based
applications. Recent advances in the omic-tools
and techniques have rejuvenated research on
duckweeds, resulting in a fast accumulation of
genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic
resources to the field. This recent progress
enables us to use duckweeds to address biological questions related to stress physiology,
phytotoxicity, adaptive strategies of aquatic
plants and the molecular interactions between
aquatic microorganisms and plants. Throughout the past decades, unimaginably wide-range
applications of duckweeds like wastewater
purification, use of protein-rich biomass for
animal feed and human nutrition, use of
starch-rich biomass as source of renewable
energy and as factories for producing
plant-derived pharmaceuticals, to name a few,
have been in development, or laboratory scale.
We look forward to a deeper understanding of
these wonderful plants and many new functional technologies on the horizon.
18.1 Introduction
Not only arable fields are suitable for robust cultivation of crops. With a fast-growing global
population, the challenges of expanding demand
for resources need to be addressed by developing
new and alternative agricultural systems for production of food, feed, and raw materials. Fortunately, duckweeds (Lemnaceae) which are
productive and versatile aquatic monocot plants
offer tremendous and unique opportunities for
floating cultures under a wide range of conditions
Giang T. H. Vu, Paul Fourounjian—These authors
contributed equally to this work.
G. T. H. Vu
Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant
Research (IPK), Corrensstrasse 3, 06166
Gatersleben, Germany
P. Fourounjian
Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers
University, Piscataway 08854, USA
W. Wang
School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai
200240, China
X. H. Cao (&)
Institute of Biology/Plant Physiology,
Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg,
Weinbergweg 10, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
e-mail: xuan.cao@biologie.uni-halle.de
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
X. H. Cao et al. (eds.), The Duckweed Genomes, Compendium of Plant Genomes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11045-1_18
179