this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
48 points (100.0% liked)

Environment

3923 readers
7 users here now

Environmental and ecological discussion, particularly of things like weather and other natural phenomena (especially if they're not breaking news).

See also our Nature and Gardening community for discussion centered around things like hiking, animals in their natural habitat, and gardening (urban or rural).


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I doubt the headline is accurate as far a meat lovers go, but this was pretty amazing to read. Looking into the company further after reading the article, I found it's still only in round B of series funding, so it's not yet moved out of initial investment rounds and a ways off from making the initial public offering (IPO) stage. Pretty amazing they have done so much since beginning in 2016. According to CBInsights, to date they have a modest 56.1M invested in the company. The claim that "duckweed may become humanity’s first new major crop in more than a century," seems farfetched but at the rate they are advancing the tech, quite possible if investment holds imho.

top 6 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] thrawn21@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago

If it's truly tasteless and dissolves completely in water, yet can bind like eggs, that opens up a huge range of applications. Really hope they're able to scale up production.

[–] Lost_Wanderer@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

Duckweed is already eaten in a few places. Interesting to see them using it to extract Rubisco on a large scale. Hope they get all the kinks figured out. Long live plant proteins.

[–] Crankpork@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't see mentioned anywhere what happens to the plant waste once the 1% of protein is extracted, but this is really neat! Definitely hope to hear more about it.

[–] El_Dorado@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

It could be a good combination with bioenergy

[–] SavinaRoja@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is fascinating. Perhaps the plant protein as meat substitute is getting too much focus? Maybe that's just the part that is seen as potentially the most profitable. I wonder if that's shortsighted compared to using the whole plant as a potential food source.

I was familiar with duckweed's use in aquaculture systems, but not with the fact that duckweed is actively consumed and quite edible: Nutritional value of duckweeds (Lemnaceae) as human food

The application of selective pressure to work on making domesticated forms is cool. The rapid generational cycle of just a couple days has got to make that nicer to work with. We have better abilities today than in past centuries to leverage artificial aquaculture. Though again, I think I that we should not overlook consuming the whole plant, it's definitely interesting considering how it could be fractionated into different components. If processed to extract specific protein content, I could imagine that the rest of the slurry byproduct could still have uses in human nutrition, fish feed, fertilizers, and more. Growing duckweed also captures carbon from the air.

[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

This looks awesome

load more comments
view more: next ›