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The plant protein that could push meat off your plate (wapo.st)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Leafeytea@beehaw.org to c/environment@beehaw.org

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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.

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[–] 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.