易胜博官网

Duckweed, a common aquatic plant in 易胜博官网's lakes, ponds and streams could help filter excess nutrients contaminating water, and then be used as a green manure 鈥� i.e., living plants that are incorporated or plowed into the soil 鈥撎齣n agricultural systems. Research by (NHAES) scientists seeks to understand how effectively growing duckweed in different bodies of water can capture excess nutrients, and then how to safely use the resulting harvested living duckweed as fertilizer on farms. If successful, the discoveries could not only help mitigate adverse impacts of increasing urbanization across the state but increase the sustainability of 易胜博官网鈥檚 food production.

鈥淐hemical fertilizers provide quick nutrient boosts, but when mismanaged can also lead to adverse environmental impacts. Green manures instead release nutrients slowly and support microbial activity, thus enhancing benefits to plants,鈥� said , an assistant professor in the and a scientist with the NHAES. 鈥淲e chose duckweed as a possible green manure because it鈥檚 a native plant in 易胜博官网, it鈥檚 naturally abundant in our waterbodies, and research shows that it can recapture nutrients in runoff and agricultural wastewater.鈥�

In previous studies led by O鈥橞rien, she found that duckweed, when interacting with microbial organisms that live on or inside the plants, can transform certain pollutants into forms that are predicted to be less toxic. Through similar mechanisms, the duckweed microbiomes could significantly reduce how much nitrogen and phosphorus lost from different sources 鈥� including听farms, residential communities, commercial operations and roadways 鈥� ends up in our waterways and water supply. An over-abundance of these nutrients can impact groundwater and drinking water quality and lead to large algal blooms and oxygen-depleted 鈥渄ead zones鈥� in which fish and other species struggle to survive.

Common duckweed grows rapidly and easily, and can be found in ponds, lakes and slow-moving streams across the world, including 易胜博官网 and northeastern New England. This makes duckweed an ideal plant for applied and experimental use, O'Brien said.

O鈥橞rien and her team, including Alyssa Daigle, a , are first focusing on how differences in the genetic makeup of duckweed species鈥攁nd their associated microbial communities鈥攊mpact the effectiveness of nutrient remediation as well as the ability of the resulting green manure to promote crop growth. To do this, they鈥檝e collected duckweed samples from across 易胜博官网 and are growing them in small micro-environments, called microcosms, and then testing how many nutrients each microcosm recaptures.

Daigle is leading the research that evaluates whether duckweed poses risks for transferring toxic compounds from the water source to crops produced with duckweed-based fertilizer. If so, the researchers will investigate whether other aquatic microbes could mitigate these effects.

鈥淧revious work showing plant- or microbe- specific effects on nutrient uptake and their interactions with cyanobacteria suggests that some duckweed-microbiome combinations are likely to enhance nutrient uptake and reduce the overall risk of toxin transfer relative to others, thus paving the way for safer and more effective green manure applications,鈥� said Daigle.

The research will include applying duckweed green manure to germinating lettuce and measuring for toxin transfer in the resulting crop. The results of that study will help the research team identify the feasibility of using duckweed as a soil amendment for agricultural operations and backyard growers.

鈥淯ltimately, our findings could have significant implications for 易胜博官网 farmers, offering a more sustainable and more affordable alternative to chemical fertilizers and practical solutions to integrating green manure into agricultural practices,鈥� said O鈥橞rien.

This material is based on work supported by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station through joint funding from the (under Hatch award number听7005040) and the state of 易胜博官网.

For more details on research into the use of duckweed as a biological decontaminant, visit .