Close Menu
Technology Mag

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    What's Hot

    Meta is making the metaverse look better

    September 17, 2025

    The new Oakley Meta glasses are what athletes actually want

    September 17, 2025

    Meta’s Ray-Ban Gen 2 and Oakley Vanguard glasses are available to preorder

    September 17, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Subscribe
    Technology Mag
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
    • Home
    • News
    • Business
    • Games
    • Gear
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Security
    • Trending
    • Press Release
    Technology Mag
    Home » Get Ready to Eat Pond Plants
    Science

    Get Ready to Eat Pond Plants

    News RoomBy News RoomMarch 16, 20243 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp Email

    If you ever watch a duck float across a pond, gobbling up the vegetation coating the surface, that bird is way ahead of its time. The buoyant greenery is azolla, a tiny fern that grows like crazy, doubling its biomass as quickly as every two days to conquer small bodies of water. The duck doesn’t know it—and who could blame it, really—but azolla may soon spread across human civilization, becoming food for people and livestock, fertilizer for crops, and even biofuel.

    “I’m not out here saying everybody should go eat this stuff right away,” says research technologist Daniel Winstead, who’s studying azolla at Penn State. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done. But boy, it’s got so much potential.”

    The main reason you wouldn’t want to go scoop some azolla out of a pond and eat it duck-style is, first of all, yuck. But also, previously studied species of azolla are typically high in polyphenols, a family of compounds found in many types of plant. In small quantities, polyphenols act as antioxidants, meaning they help remove certain harmful substances from the body. But in azolla quantities, polyphenols may interfere with the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. At such levels, not only are they not nutritious, they’re anti-nutritious.

    But there’s a species—Carolina azolla, native to the southeastern United States—that doesn’t have this drawback. Testing for polyphenolic content, Winstead found this azolla to have much, much lower levels than other species, actually more in line with the mainstay fruits and vegetables Americans eat. And when Winstead prepared Carolina azolla in three different ways—fermentation, boiling, and pressure cooking—he found this reduced the polyphenolic content still further, by 62, 88, and 92 percent, respectively. (According to chefs, azolla is “crisp and juicy,” tasting “somewhat of earth, metal, minerals, mushrooms, moss, and grass.”)

    This, Winstead believes, could be the key to making azolla a common food worldwide. “You could use those cooking methods on these other species of azolla from Asia,” says Winstead, who described the findings in a recent paper. “That would reduce polyphenol content to a level that was not limiting.”

    Compared to other vegetables, Carolina azolla is high in zinc, manganese, iron, calcium, and potassium, and is relatively high in protein (though has less than a grain like barley). And that’s from wild azolla. “Wheat, rice, barley, soybeans—all these things have been domesticated and cultivated, choosing for attributes like nutrition,” says Winstead. “So just imagine if people did that for azolla, if you could create an azolla strain that creates a whole bunch of precursors for biodiesel. You could create another one that creates tons of protein.”

    Again, Winstead isn’t suggesting that anyone go out and harvest their local pond for azolla. But with further research, azolla has the potential to become a more extensively cultivated crop, especially if scientists can breed it to express even more nutrients. They’ll also need to further vet the plant to make sure it isn’t toxic in other ways. “I think there is a real possibility for its use as a foodstuff in the future, provided there is extensive research on possible toxin content due to their symbiotic cyanobacteria,” says  Winstead. “Corn is currently used as biofuel, livestock feed, and a foodstuff, and I think azolla holds a similar potential.”

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticleHow the House revived the TikTok ban bill before most of us noticed
    Next Article The Best External Hard Drives

    Related Posts

    The Next Era of Gene Editing Will Be Disease Agnostic

    September 17, 2025

    WIRED Health Recap: Cancer Vaccines, Crispr Breakthroughs, and More

    September 17, 2025

    Crispr Offers New Hope for Treating Diabetes

    September 17, 2025

    US Taxpayers Will Pay Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill

    September 15, 2025

    The New Math of Quantum Cryptography

    September 15, 2025

    ‘People Are So Proud of This’: How River and Lake Water Is Cooling Buildings

    September 15, 2025
    Our Picks

    The new Oakley Meta glasses are what athletes actually want

    September 17, 2025

    Meta’s Ray-Ban Gen 2 and Oakley Vanguard glasses are available to preorder

    September 17, 2025

    I regret to inform you Meta’s new smart glasses are the best I’ve ever tried

    September 17, 2025

    Meta Connect 2025: the 6 biggest announcements

    September 17, 2025
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    • Vimeo
    Don't Miss
    News

    Meta is bringing an all-in-one movie and TV streaming hub to Quest headsets

    By News RoomSeptember 17, 2025

    Meta is making it easier to stream movies and TV shows on your Quest headset.…

    All the news from Meta Connect 2025

    September 17, 2025

    Microsoft’s new Xbox mode on Windows has leaked for any handheld

    September 17, 2025

    The Next Era of Gene Editing Will Be Disease Agnostic

    September 17, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of use
    • Advertise
    • Contact
    © 2025 Technology Mag. All Rights Reserved.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.