Karen (UR) And we're off >>

Yesterday I started my IRP !  I've got everything set up and now it's just a matter of monitoring the  Nitrate levels and the duckweed.

The 4 culture dishes

Tiny plants

Using a mixture of 500ml of distilled water with 5 drops of the 8-7-6 liquid fertilizer, I added 200ml to each of the 4 4 1/2 inch culture dishes.  Before adding the duckweed, I tested the Nitrate level.  Using the LaMotte Nitrate/Phosphate #3119 kit.  Once I got the reading from the test, I had to convert it to Nitrate from Nitrate N.  The original reading was 0.4 ppm and when multiplied by 4.4 as per the kit instruction I got a reading of 1.76ppm of Nitrate.  I then added 25-30 of the plants into 3 of the dishes (1 is a control), they are tiny so counting them wasn't easy !!  The dishes were then placed into the environmental chamber. Every 48 hours I will test nitrate levels and also check water levels for evaporation and transpiration every 48 hours.  Then I will add the fertilizer/distilled water mixture as need.  What will be really interesting is to see how fast the duckweed reproduces with the added nutrients !

Sarah sec 101 asked: I saw a really cool article about higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere causing poison ivy to get bigger leaves (and stronger poisons). Do you think the same thing would happen to your duckweed? that it will be supersized and actually result in more CO2 being removed from the atmosphere? could duckweed save us from climate change impacts? and maybe produce bigger and better food? just wondering. Thanks!

Great question !! I did a little research last night, you got me thinking !! The research on the poison ivy was really interesting. Thankfully, I don't have a reaction to it, cause it was a little scary :-) So to answer your question: No, duckweed will not grow bigger leaves due to CO2 concentrations being higher. It will reproduce at a faster rate when excess nutrients are introduced to its environment. This is not a bad thing as duckweed is a high protein food source and will certainly help with the CO2 levels. Maybe, duckweed can help us defer some of the impacts from climate change, that's something to look into in the future.

Dr Woodall commented:  I have to say I think Sarah might onto something. If you recall, we learned that back in the Carboniferous Period when oxygen levels were significantly higher than today--these higher levels caused insects to be supersized...e.g., dragonflies the size of eagles. So why not cause any/all vegetation to grow more if they have more CO2 to feed upon? Just wondering...rather cool thought I think! In fact--I think I recall a study conducted on trees where they pumped the area with much higher CO2 and the trees responded with greater growth...might want to look that up. Regardless--I think this might be a great idea for 'future research'.

I have to say I like the idea of eagle size dragonflies :-)  I completely agree on further research !!  I seem to remember, not sure what Period it was, that there was super-sized vegetation too.  Hmmm, now I'm hooked, gotta do more research !  To think I can't even keep a house plant alive and now I'm going down the rabbit hole of botany.......