The finding challenges a common assumption about miniaturisation. In animals, becoming tiny is often associated with the loss of organs or body structures, as seen in miniature frogs, fish, and insects that simplify their anatomy to fit a reduced frame. Duckweeds took a different evolutionary route. Rather than throwing away parts of the blueprint, they appear to have packed every component into an incredibly compact form, fusing neighbouring elements that remain separate in larger relatives. The result is a complete flowering plant, complete with roots, flowers, and a functioning shoot, occupying a space smaller than a pencil eraser.

Dr Anthony Bishopp, who led the study, explained the surprise at the heart of the work. When the team looked closely at duckweed shoots, the basic organisation was still there. The compressed and fused components preserved the essential relationships of a conventional plant shoot, meaning that duckweed is not a simplified or primitive organism but a fully elaborated plant rendered in miniature. This reframing matters because it gives researchers a new way of thinking about how plants can evolve to become so small without sacrificing the features that make them viable, reproductive organisms.

Duckweeds belong to a family that includes some of the largest herbaceous plants, making the size range within this lineage extraordinary. The contrast between a few-millimetre duckweed and its giant relatives highlights how flexible the angiosperm body plan can be. Understanding the mechanisms behind this flexibility is not just an academic curiosity. It touches on one of the central questions of developmental biology: how does a genome and a developmental program produce a complete organism across such wildly different scales?

The research team combined gene expression profiling with cutting-edge microscopy to map the internal anatomy of duckweed shoots at unprecedented detail. By identifying which genes are active in which tissues, they could confirm that the compressed structures correspond to the same cell types and tissue layers found in larger plants. The microscopy revealed the physical arrangement of these tissues, showing how leaves, stems, and other shoot components are packed into a volume orders of magnitude smaller than in typical flowering plants. Together, these approaches provided both molecular and structural evidence that miniaturisation occurred through compression rather than deletion.

Dr Alex Ware, co-author of the study, noted that duckweeds are astonishingly small, so it is tempting to think of them as either primitive plants or simply as having lost parts, but this is not the case. The research adds to growing evidence from across the research community about this plant and will help efforts to turn them into a future crop. That practical goal is driving rapid growth in duckweed research worldwide, as scientists and agriculturalists recognise the potential of these tiny plants as a source of food and novel protein on Earth.

Unlike most crops grown today, which have been shaped by thousands of years of domestication and selective breeding, the potential of duckweed remains largely unexplored. Even the basic architecture of the duckweed plant has remained something of a mystery until now. Understanding how its body is organised provides an essential framework for understanding how duckweed grows, develops, and functions, and ultimately how its potential might be improved. Without this foundational knowledge, efforts to breed or engineer duckweed for higher yields or better nutrition would proceed blindly, without knowing which traits matter or how they are controlled.

The implications extend beyond terrestrial agriculture. Duckweeds are being considered as a possible crop for future space missions, where their small size, rapid growth, and high protein content could make them ideal candidates for closed-loop life support systems. A plant that packs a complete body plan into a few millimetres, grows quickly, and produces edible biomass could be invaluable on long-duration missions where every cubic centimetre and every watt of energy counts. The new understanding of duckweed architecture gives space agriculture researchers a clearer picture of what these plants can do and how they might be optimised for off-world cultivation.

The study, titled Miniaturization of duckweeds occurred through compression of the angiosperm body plan, represents an experimental study published in Current Biology with the DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.035. It opens the door to further research into the genetic and developmental mechanisms that allow such extreme size reduction. If scientists can identify the specific genetic switches that control compression and fusion in duckweeds, those insights could potentially be applied to other crops, creating more compact plants that produce more food per unit of space. In a world where arable land is increasingly scarce and space exploration is accelerating, the humble duckweed, long overlooked as a pond nuisance, may prove to be one of the most important model organisms of the coming decades.

Subject of Research: Miniaturisation of duckweeds through compression of the angiosperm body plan

Article Title: Scientists uncover how the world’s smallest flowering plant became so tiny

Article References: Scientists uncover how the world’s smallest flowering plant became so tiny. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: duckweed, miniaturisation, plant development, gene expression, microscopy, Current Biology, University of Nottingham, angiosperm body plan, future crops, space agriculture, novel protein, plant architecture

The proposal, published in the journal Discover Biotechnology, builds on a growing body of work in plant-derived edible vaccines. The idea is deceptively simple: genetically engineer a plant to produce an antigen, a harmless fragment of a pathogen that the immune system can learn to recognize, and then have people or animals eat the plant tissue. When the antigen reaches the gut, it encounters the gut-associated lymphoid tissue, or GALT, a dense network of immune cells that guards one of the body’s main entry points for pathogens. Studies in both mice and humans have shown that plant-derived antigens delivered orally can stimulate antigen-specific mucosal IgA antibodies as well as serum IgG, the systemic antibody class measured after conventional immunization. That dual response matters, because mucosal immunity is the first line of defense against the respiratory and intestinal infections that cause enormous global disease burden.

Plant-based delivery also solves some stubborn engineering problems. The plant cell wall acts as a natural capsule, shielding antigenic proteins from the acidic environment of the stomach so they survive long enough to reach immune tissue. Even more striking, freeze-dried plant material expressing vaccine antigens has been shown to maintain antigen integrity at ambient temperatures, eliminating the need for refrigeration during storage and transport. For regions where electricity is unreliable and cold-chain logistics are prohibitively expensive, a vaccine that can sit on a shelf as dried powder is a fundamentally different proposition from one that must be kept chilled at every step.

Among the many plants tested as vaccine factories, duckweeds—tiny aquatic flowering plants of the family Lemnaceae—stand out. They pack protein at up to 40 percent of their dry weight, grow at remarkable speed on inexpensive byproduct substrates, and, crucially for vaccine consistency, are so small and anatomically uniform that antigen levels should be even between individual plants. That uniformity addresses one of the biggest weaknesses of edible vaccines in general: dosage. When a vaccine is eaten, the amount of antigen consumed can vary depending on which part of the plant is eaten and how much, leading to inconsistent immune responses. Researchers are countering this with genetic engineering strategies that drive uniform antigen expression in specific tissues, and duckweed’s near-homogeneous body plan gives it a natural head start.

The evidence in animal models is encouraging. Duckweed engineered to express Interleukin-17B has been used as a mucosal adjuvant against infectious bronchitis virus in chickens. When the M2e peptide of the H5N1 avian influenza virus—a sequence so conserved it appears across essentially all influenza strains—was expressed in duckweed and fed to mice, the animals produced anti-M2e antibodies detectable in blood serum. And in an aquaculture demonstration, zebrafish fed transgenic duckweed carrying the LamB antigen from Vibrio alginolyticus were protected against fish vibriosis: when challenged with five times the lethal dose of the pathogen, 63 percent of the vaccinated fish survived, compared with complete mortality in the unvaccinated control group.

So why has no one scaled this up? The answer lies in duckweed’s biology. Because the plants are aquatic, they need vast expanses of water to grow, and in water-scarce regions that requirement can outweigh the benefits of the vaccine itself. Artificial ponds would have to be built, consuming capital and competing with agriculture and urban development for land. Open-air ponds are also vulnerable to contamination by microalgae and fungi, which can render entire batches unusable and impose heavy financial losses. Finally, harvesting delicate, millimeter-scale plants is logistically awkward, and ponds are often located far from the end users, forcing complex delivery chains that erode the cost advantages that made duckweed attractive in the first place.

The research team’s answer is a vertical farming and recirculation system. Instead of spreading duckweed across horizontal ponds, the design stacks multiple layers of cultivation trays, with the liquid medium held at a shallow depth of roughly five centimeters—enough for duckweed, which floats at the surface, to thrive. Water is pumped to the top tray and flows gravitationally through the lower trays back to a reserve basin at the bottom, continuously recirculating and dramatically cutting water use. According to the authors, this vertical arrangement could raise production yield per unit area by a factor of ten to twenty compared with conventional cultivation. Biomass is collected with a filtration-based harvester that returns the supernatant to the basin, minimizing waste.

Vertical farms have a well-known Achilles’ heel: trays lower in the stack are shaded by those above. The proposed solution is elegantly mechanical. The trays would be made of transparent material and mounted on retractable mechanisms along both horizontal axes, with a programmable algorithm adjusting the retraction amplitude and frequency in response to real-time light sensors, so each layer of duckweed gets its optimal share of sunlight. Solar panels integrated into the structure would help offset the energy costs of pumping and automation. The team also proposes siting these systems on livestock and poultry farms, where animal wastewater could serve as the growth medium—turning a disposal problem into a nutrient source while the duckweed simultaneously purifies the water. Settling ponds can reduce turbidity and microbial load in the wastewater before use, and prior studies indicate that duckweed grown on wastewater does not suffer unsafe microbial contamination. Because the system is enclosed, it also limits environmental contamination and gene flow, aligning with global biosafety regulations; regular monitoring for heavy metals in the waste streams would be needed, with quality control applied across the value chain to meet Good Manufacturing Practice standards.

The envisioned value chain runs from molecular bioengineering to the dinner bowl. A gene encoding a pathogenic antigen is introduced into duckweed, the transformed plants are cultivated at scale in the retractable vertical trays, and the harvested biomass is dried and ground into a powder that can be mixed into food or feed—immunizing and nourishing the consumer at the same time. The capital costs of such a system, especially when fitted with solar panels, sensors, and automated retraction, exceed those of traditional greenhouse production, but they are far lower than bioreactor-based manufacturing, and operating expenses can be trimmed by optimizing light regimes. The authors argue that high yields and low downstream processing costs could give the approach a decisive edge in overall unit economics, with lighting costs and protein yield as the two variables that will ultimately determine competitiveness.

Significant hurdles remain before duckweed vaccines reach the main course. Purification steps are still required before the material can be used as a vaccine, and the regulatory pathway for an edible, plant-grown immunization is uncharted territory in most jurisdictions. Yet the convergence of advances in plant biotechnology—improved promoter optimization, enhanced expression systems, and synthetic biology tools—with a cultivation system designed for scale suggests that the gap between laboratory proof and global health impact may finally be closable. If powdered duckweed vaccines can be grown beside the farms and villages that need them, stored without refrigeration, and eaten rather than injected, one of medicine’s oldest tools could take on one of its most persistent inequities.

Subject of Research: Vertical farming of transgenic duckweed for scalable production of edible vaccines

Article Title: Vertical farming of duckweed: advancing edible vaccine production for global health

Article References: Grieš, M., Rosputinský, M., Mećava, M., & del Valle, A. C. (2025). Vertical farming of duckweed: advancing edible vaccine production for global health. Discover Biotechnology, 2(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44340-025-00018-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44340-025-00018-x

Keywords: duckweed, edible vaccines, vertical farming, mucosal immunity, transgenic plants, Lemnaceae, cold chain, wastewater, antigen expression, global health, plant biotechnology, aquaculture

The biological foundation of this promise lies in duckweed’s extraordinary body plan. The family comprises five genera, Spirodela, Landoltia, Lemna, Wolffiella, and Wolffia, forming an evolutionary gradient from the rooted, structurally complex Spirodela to the rootless, millimeter-scale Wolffia, the smallest flowering plant known. This simplification is the product of reductive evolution: as ancestral land plants returned to water, they progressively shed roots, extensive vascular tissue, and woody structures. What remains is a leaf-like frond that reproduces clonally every one to three days, driven by meristematic activity in budding pouches at the frond base. That doubling rate, among the fastest of any vascular plant, translates directly into short production cycles and high volumetric yields in a biomanufacturing context.

Duckweeds also display remarkable developmental plasticity. Under nutrient starvation, crowding, or shortening days, many species switch from rapid vegetative growth to producing turions, dense dormant propagules packed with starch and lipids. Abscisic acid signaling initiates this program, cell division ceases, and storage compounds accumulate massively; breaking dormancy requires prolonged cold followed by warming and light, after which stored reserves fuel a new frond. Light quality offers another tuning dial: red versus blue light differentially steers biomass toward starch or protein, a lever that could let producers tailor output for biofuels, animal feed, or protein-rich products. Even the plant’s elemental composition shifts with its body plan, as rootless species show markedly lower tissue calcium and magnesium than their rooted relatives.

The genomic era has decoded the logic behind this minimalism. Chromosome-scale assemblies for Spirodela polyrhiza and Lemna minor, and a highly complete genome for Wolffia australiana, reveal a genus-by-genus contraction of gene families tied to lost structures, including lignocellulose biosynthesis, root development, and stomatal function. Yet reduction has been selective: Spirodela shows tandem expansions of disease-resistance genes and antimicrobial peptide genes, while an expanded flavonoid pathway supports ultraviolet protection at the water surface. Cytogenomic surveys of all 36 duckweed species have cataloged a complex history of whole-genome duplication, hybridization, and polyploidy, with triploid hybrids surprisingly common because the genetic pathways enforcing reproductive isolation appear weakened.

Perhaps the most consequential discovery for engineers is duckweed’s radically simplified epigenome. Spirodela polyrhiza has lost key components of the canonical RNA-directed DNA methylation pathway, resulting in very low levels of 24-nucleotide small interfering RNAs and drastically reduced cytosine methylation in gene bodies and repeats. Degenerated transposable elements are instead marked by alternative heterochromatin modifications such as H3K9me1 and H3K27me1, while only intact, potentially active elements retain a focused residual silencing mechanism. For biotechnologists, this matters enormously: reduced gene-silencing machinery lowers the risk that an introduced transgene will be epigenetically shut down, promising more predictable and stable expression of engineered traits than in conventional plant platforms.

Single-cell and metabolomic studies are filling in the remaining blueprint. Single-nucleus and single-cell RNA sequencing of Wolffia australiana resolved just four principal cell clusters, aquatic and aerial parenchyma plus epidermis, with remarkably few genes defining tissue specialization, confirming its status as a streamlined organism. A preliminary atlas of Lemna minuta highlighted mesophyll cells rich in elemental transport genes, consistent with the genus’s phytoremediation prowess. Meanwhile, a genome-wide association study of 137 Spirodela genotypes across 42 metabolites exposed a fundamental growth-metabolism trade-off: biomass correlates positively with free amino acids but negatively with specialized metabolites like flavonoids. The authors propose a two-phase cultivation strategy, first maximizing biomass, then triggering production pathways, mirroring approaches long used in microbial fermentation.

Genetic tooling has advanced just as dramatically. Early Agrobacterium-mediated protocols in Lemna gibba and Lemna minor relied on slow callus cultures, exemplified by an Indian isolate protocol that took 11 to 13 weeks and achieved only 3.8 percent transformation frequency. The Frond Transformation System changed the calculus by bypassing callus entirely, cutting stable line generation from eight or nine months to roughly three and extending compatibility to previously recalcitrant genotypes. CRISPR-Cas9 editing arrived in Lemna aequinoctialis in 2019 with a five-to-six-week cycle and a 14.3 percent biallelic mutant rate. More recently, a so-called duckweed dip method uses plasmid DNA wrapped around carbon nanotubes that plants absorb directly from their medium, and optimized platforms for Spirodela now report efficiencies exceeding 90 percent at every stage, completed in weeks. Endogenous promoters such as LpSUT2 from Landoltia punctata address another chronic problem, maintaining robust expression under stress conditions where the viral 35S promoter becomes methylated and silenced.

These tools are already yielding functional products. Duckweed has been engineered to express the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus spike protein, the conserved M2e peptide of avian influenza H5N1 at up to 1.96 percent of total soluble protein, and chicken interleukin-17B, which acted as an effective oral mucosal vaccine adjuvant in poultry. A duckweed-based edible vaccine recently conferred complete protection against avian infectious bronchitis virus by inducing robust mucosal and systemic immunity. Transient viral-vector systems achieve yields above one milligram per gram fresh weight within days. Compared with tobacco, the incumbent plant chassis, duckweed offers distinct advantages: it is naturally edible and free of alkaloid contaminants, its cell walls are low in lignin, simplifying extraction, and its obligate aquatic, rarely flowering habit provides built-in biological containment that mitigates transgene escape.

Traditional applications reinforce the platform’s credentials. Duckweed cover on irrigated paddies can almost entirely offset ammonia volatilization induced by water-saving irrigation, through a tripartite mechanism of physical gas blocking, direct ammonium uptake, and reduced water temperature. Replacing up to 15 percent of wheat and soybean meal in laying hen diets with Lemna minor maintained egg production while enhancing yolk color and showing hepatoprotective signs. Under combined nutrient limitation and elevated carbon dioxide, Landoltia punctata accumulated starch to more than 72 percent of dry weight at 10.4 grams per square meter per day, while mixotrophic bioreactor cultivation has reached growth rates of 152.3 grams per square meter per day, projecting yields near 50 tonnes of dry biomass per hectare annually. Duckweed systems also remove over 80 percent of chemical oxygen demand, over 90 percent of total phosphorus, and over half of total nitrogen from wastewater streams.

Significant hurdles remain before duckweed becomes an industrial workhorse. Large-scale cultivation must solve self-shading in dense mats, oxygen limitation under mixotrophic conditions, contamination in open water, and the fragility of fronds during harvesting, where mechanical skimming achieves 60 to 80 percent recovery and filtration exceeds 90 percent but clogs easily. Long-term transgene stability across hundreds of clonal generations lacks empirical data, and regulatory pathways for recombinant products from a novel aquatic host remain uncharted. The review’s authors call for integrated omics databases, universal genetic toolkits with standardized reporting, and scalable bioreactor designs to bridge the gap from proof of concept to production. If those pieces come together, the world’s smallest flowering plants may carry a disproportionate share of the sustainable manufacturing burden ahead.

Subject of Research: Duckweed biology and genetic engineering as a sustainable plant chassis for biotechnology

Article Title: Duckweeds: from fundamental biology to a sustainable plant chassis for biotechnology

Article References: Yin, G.-M., Yang, L., Li, S., & Zhang, Y. (2026). Duckweeds: from fundamental biology to a sustainable plant chassis for biotechnology. Advanced Biotechnology, 4(2), Article 16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44307-026-00110-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44307-026-00110-1

Keywords: duckweed, Lemnaceae, plant chassis, molecular farming, CRISPR-Cas9, epigenome, phytoremediation, biopharmaceuticals, synthetic biology, genomics, starch production, sustainable biotechnology

Duckweeds, members of the family Lemnaceae, are the smallest flowering plants on Earth, yet they punch far above their weight nutritionally. Under optimal conditions they can produce six to ten times more protein per hectare than soybean, and they do so without requiring any arable land, thriving instead on the surface of nutrient-rich ponds, lakes and wetlands. Their amino acid profile aligns with World Health Organization recommendations for human nutrition, and previous work has shown that methionine and tryptophan levels exceed FAO guidelines by 76 percent and 24 percent respectively. Sri Lanka’s tropical climate and abundant inland water bodies make the country an ideal setting for year-round duckweed cultivation, yet until now the nutritional and bioactive properties of its native species had remained largely unexplored.

The research team, led by scientists at the National Institute of Fundamental Studies in Kandy, collected the four species from Puttalam, Soragune, Peradeniya and Bolgoda between May and June 2023, authenticated them at the National Herbarium in Peradeniya, and cultivated them under controlled greenhouse conditions before analysis. Proximate analysis revealed protein contents ranging from 17.34 to 26.45 percent of dry weight, with Landoltia punctata showing the highest protein levels of the four. Carbohydrate content ranged from 6.95 to 14.55 percent, crude fat from 3.69 to 3.92 percent, ash from 8.03 to 9.55 percent and crude fiber from 5.26 to 9.49 percent. Spirodela polyrhiza stood out for its significantly higher fat, carbohydrate and crude fiber contents, while Lemna minor had the highest moisture.

Mineral analysis using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy showed that potassium dominated the elemental profile, ranging from 20.17 to 50.07 grams per kilogram of dry weight, with Lemna perpusilla accumulating the most potassium and sodium. Calcium ranged from 11.03 to 25.46 grams per kilogram, with Spirodela polyrhiza also leading in magnesium and calcium. Crucially for food safety, the levels of lead and cadmium in all four species fell below the thresholds set by the World Health Organization and the European Commission, addressing one of the chief concerns about using duckweed grown in natural waters for human consumption, since these plants are well known to absorb heavy metals from contaminated aquatic environments.

Perhaps the most striking nutritional finding came from the fatty acid analysis. Omega-3 fatty acids, including alpha-linolenic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid, constituted between 44.42 and 50.38 percent of total fatty acids across all four species. Alpha-linolenic acid was the most abundant individual fatty acid in three of the species, ranging from 29.53 to 46.44 percent, followed by palmitic and linoleic acids. The unsaturated-to-saturated fatty acid ratios ranged from 1.54 to 2.71, and polyunsaturated fatty acids vastly outnumbered monounsaturated ones. The favorable omega-6 to omega-3 ratios, typically between 5:3 and 4:1, are associated with reduced risk of inflammation, cardiovascular disease and cancer, positioning duckweed as a rare plant-based source of these essential fats.

Beyond basic nutrition, the extracts displayed remarkable bioactivity. In alpha-amylase inhibition assays, which measure the potential to slow starch digestion and blunt post-meal blood sugar spikes, Spirodela polyrhiza and Landoltia punctata achieved an IC50 of just 0.14 micrograms per milliliter, while Lemna minor showed the strongest overall inhibition across all solvents. Every duckweed extract outperformed acarbose, the standard antidiabetic drug, which required an IC50 of 12.16 micrograms per milliliter. On the anti-obesity front, a 60 percent ethanol extract of Spirodela polyrhiza inhibited pancreatic lipase with an IC50 of 1.39 micrograms per milliliter, approaching the potency of the pharmaceutical drug orlistat, while Lemna minor consistently posted the lowest IC50 values across solvents.

The antimicrobial results were equally compelling. Spirodela polyrhiza produced the largest inhibition zone against Escherichia coli at 17.33 millimeters and showed notable activity against Aspergillus niger, while Landoltia punctata excelled against Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger. Lemna minor inhibited both bacterial strains and both fungi, consistent with earlier studies. The researchers attribute these effects to a rich arsenal of secondary metabolites, including flavonoids, phenolics, tannins, saponins, terpenoids and phytosterols such as beta-sitosterol, which disrupt microbial membranes and cellular functions. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry identified rutin as the most abundant polyphenol in all four species, at 2.96 to 3.06 micrograms per milligram of dry matter, along with vanillic, gallic, chlorogenic, caffeic, ferulic and p-coumaric acids in varying combinations.

The phenolic profile may explain much of the observed bioactivity. Rutin, which was especially abundant in Lemna minor, is known to inhibit starch-digesting enzymes through competitive and mixed-type inhibition involving hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions, and previous studies have found it more effective than quercetin at blocking alpha-amylase and alpha-glucosidase. Gallic acid and catechin, detected in Landoltia punctata and Lemna minor, are established lipase inhibitors, aligning with the strong anti-obesity activity observed in those species. Meanwhile, the p-coumaric and ferulic acids found in Spirodela polyrhiza and Landoltia punctata are known to disrupt microbial membranes, correlating with their antimicrobial performance. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy confirmed the presence of five distinct amide absorption bands and carbohydrate-associated signals, providing molecular evidence of the protein-rich composition.

Safety testing using the brine shrimp lethality assay showed low to moderate toxicity, with LC50 values exceeding 4000 parts per million for the tested extracts, well above concentrations that would raise concern. The authors caution, however, that the study has limitations: the bioactivity assays were conducted in vitro, and animal or human trials will be needed to confirm therapeutic potential and bioavailability. Long-term toxicological data, sensory evaluation and processing techniques to improve palatability also remain unexplored. Because duckweed’s composition is highly sensitive to water quality, nutrient availability and environmental stress, careful management of cultivation conditions will be essential to ensure consistent safety and nutritional value.

Even with those caveats, the implications are significant for a developing country like Sri Lanka, where protein and micronutrient deficiencies persist. Duckweed requires no farmland, grows year-round in tropical wetlands, doubles as a wastewater treatment agent and can even serve as a platform for producing pharmaceutical biomolecules such as vaccines and antibodies. The researchers conclude that these four native species, with their high-quality protein, exceptional omega-3 content, potent enzyme inhibition and broad antimicrobial activity, are strong candidates for development as nutrient-dense, affordable functional foods. If future trials validate the laboratory findings, the humble duckweed floating quietly on Sri Lanka’s ponds could become a cornerstone of sustainable nutrition, proving that some of the most powerful solutions to global food and health challenges may be the smallest plants of all.

Subject of Research: The nutritional composition and bioactive properties of four duckweed species in Sri Lanka

Article Title: Nutritional composition and bioactive properties of four duckweed species in Sri Lanka

Article References: Nutritional composition and bioactive properties of four duckweed species in Sri Lanka. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1186/s44399-026-00043-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44399-026-00043-z

Keywords: duckweed, nutrition, omega-3 fatty acids, antidiabetic, anti-obesity, antimicrobial, polyphenols, protein, Sri Lanka, functional food, food security, phytochemicals