The quest for sustainable production of biomass and renewable fuels that have low carbon footprints has become a global priority. Creating and adopting new biomass and fuel production platforms that are ecologically and economically sustainable will be essential, but pose a formidable challenge. Duckweed is a family of aquatic plants that holds great potential as a feedstock for fuel and feed production. The chief characteristics that make duckweed ideal for waste-to-biomass conversion are their rapid growth rate and their growth characteristics that enable simple harvest strategies. Duckweed thus provides a promising platform for creating sustainable solutions to biomass production that can be coupled to reclamation of wastewater from different sources. The formation of a well-coordinated, interdisciplinary community of researchers and commercial developers will be a key step toward building successful teams for duckweed research, as well as product development to benefit society-at-large. In this project, the investigators will organize an international conference that focuses1 on integrating researchers and commercial stakeholders that are establishing the essential resources to advance the duckweed platform. From diverse areas of molecular biology, ecology, wastewater remediation, to feed and fuel production using duckweed, this conference will provide an intimate forum for data sharing as well as the cross-fertilization of ideas and technical resources. An important objective will be the creation of an International Steering Committee for this field in order to promote education, research and training of duckweed researchers, students and entrepreneurs. The broader impact of this project is expected to galvanize the duckweed community in both the academic and commercial sectors for realizing the tremendous potential of this novel micro-crop to create a new industry that will also be ecologically sound.
As the impending effects of Climate Change on world agriculture are being recognized, the adoption of new crops that are more ecologically sustainable and economically viable would be critical for future food and energy security. Duckweeds are aquatic plants that can grow fast while remediating anthropogenic wastewater. Its successful deployment as a new agricultural crop can have great impact on biomass production worldwide. This award enabled the successful organization of the Second International Conference on Duckweed Research and Applications at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, which took place between August 21st and 24th of 2013. The purpose of this international conference was to galvanize the interaction amongst the various workers on this rising crop plant from the international community. In addition to allowing a timely exchange of all the exciting developments that are happening in this field, we also came together as a community to determine critical steps to unify researchers and commercial developers of this nascent field. Some concrete results from this two and a half day meeting with more than 50 participants are: 1) Creation of an International Duckweed Research Steering committee by community consensus, 2) Jointly decided on the adoption of the 4-digit code initiated by Elias Landolt more than 60 years ago for duckweed clone designation, 3) voted on the site for the next International Conference to be held on 2015, in Kyoto, Japan. Since the end of the Conference, the International Steering Committee has published 4 Newsletters to promote new developments in the community as well as to share new publications and results. In addition, the International Lemna Association has also provided additional networking opportunities by hosting webinars on various aspects of duckweed farming and product development. Lastly, to make as much of the new information presented at the meeting available to other researchers who could not attend the conference, we have posted PDF versions for most of the presentations on the Conference website. This is currently being hosted through our Rutgers Duckweed Stock Cooperative (RDSC) and can be accessed at : www.duckweed2013.rutgers.edu.
