In Asia, duckweed has long been used as food. The CritMET research group at Jacobs University, Bremen (Germany) has discovered that duckweed is not only rich in nutrients but also stores rare earth elements at particularly high levels.
The CritMET research group (Critical Metals for Enabling Technologies), led by Professor Michael Bau, recently published their findings in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
The juice extracted from duckweed is very good for health – (Photo: NUTRA INGREDIENTS)
“When duckweed absorbs rare earth elements from water, the trace elements follow manganese rather than calcium as they typically do. This indicates a very different absorption mechanism in this plant,” stated Anna-Lena Zocherocher, a member of the research team.
Some terrestrial plants and fungi are known to accumulate certain trace elements. The case of duckweed is referred to as “the accumulation process.”
“As a hyper-accumulator, duckweed can be utilized near rare earth mining sites to clean up contaminated water areas,” said Professor Bau.
Duckweed is not only considered an important livestock feed but is also viewed by experts as a “superfood” of the future, providing substantial nutrition for humans.
It contains approximately 7 times the protein of soybeans and is rich in omega-3 fatty acids. As a result, duckweed is also referred to as “water egg” in Thailand.
Another positive aspect is that, being an aquatic plant, duckweed does not occupy valuable arable land.
Trace pollutants in rivers, groundwater, and tap water worldwide do not penetrate duckweed.
Simultaneously, researchers at Jena University (Germany), along with colleagues in India and Germany, have been studying the potential of various duckweed species as a food source for humans.
Promising results have been published under the title “Nutritional Value of Duckweed (Family Lemnaceae) as Human Food” in a leading journal on food chemistry.
For thousands of years, duckweed has been part of the diet in Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.
However, these duckweed patches have not yet been cultivated on a large scale but are simply “harvested” from water bodies.
Currently, some initial testing facilities in Israel and the Netherlands are attempting to produce duckweed on an industrial scale.
