How fast can angiosperms grow? Species and clonal diversity of growth rates in the genus Wolffia (Lemnaceae)

Abstract

Species of the genus Wolffia (duckweed) are harvested from natural water bodies in many countries for human consumption. Relative growth rates (RGR) of 25 clones (ecotypes) representing all 11 species of the genus Wolffia were investigated under standardized laboratory conditions in search for potential candidates for production of Wolffia biomass at a biotechnological scale. This is the first report of large-scale screening of physiological properties of Wolffia species. Large differences in RGR of different clones were detected, e.g., in Wolffia globosa. Interestingly, intraspecific differences, i.e., at the level of clones are much higher than differences between species. Rate of photosynthesis (oxygen production in light) and respiration (oxygen consumption in dark) in clones of W. globosa, measured under standardized conditions, are in positive correlation with their respective RGR. Higher rate of photosynthesis seems to be a determining factor for higher RGR. The RGR of the first available axenic clone of the re-discovered species, Wolffia microscopica (clone 2005), depends strongly on the nutrient medium used, in contrast to other investigated species. This clone of W. microscopica has a doubling time of 29.3 h and represents the fastest growing flowering plant known till date.

Duckweed (Lemnaceae): Its Molecular Taxonomy

“…Lemnaceae (commonly known as water lens or duckweed) is a family of monocotyledonous water plants (Landolt, 1986;Landolt and Kandeler, 1987;Sree et al, 2016) characterized by the fastest growth rates among flowering plants (Sree et al, 2015b;Ziegler et al, 2015). As a consequence, the rate of biomass production is high, which provides the basis for different practical applications of duckweeds in the areas of food and feed sustainability (Landolt and Kandeler, 1987;Appenroth et al, 2017Appenroth et al, , 2018Sonta et al, 2019) and biotechnology (Zhao et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2018;Kaur et al, 2018;Ren et al, 2018).…”

Taxonomy of duckweeds (Lemnaceae), potential new crop plants

“…Lemnaceae comprises one of the fastest growing angiosperms (Sree et al, 2015c;Ziegler et al, 2015). In some Asian countries, duckweeds have been used for human nutrition for generations (Bhanthumnavin and McGarry, 1971;cf.…”

Genome and time-of-day transcriptome of Wolffia australiana link morphological extreme minimization with un-gated plant growth

“…Despite the range in genome sizes, all Wolffia species have a reduced body plan of a frond with just several thousand cells and no roots (Figure 1; Borisjuk, L., unpublished). They also have a similar fast growth rate of around a day (Table 1) with no obvious relationship to genome size (Sree et al 2015b). Wolffia is the most derived of all of the duckweed species ( Figure 1C), with dramatic body plan changes compared to the most basal Spirodela.…”

“…Duckweeds and specifically Wolffia are the fastest growing plants on Earth (Ziegler et al 2015;Sree et al 2015b); W. australiana doubles in just over a day (Table 1). Since growth is controlled at some level by the circadian clock and coordination of TOD expression networks, we set out to produce a temporally-resolved transcriptome dataset for one of the two Wolffia accessions.…”