Duckweed is belong to the Lemnaceae family a group of smallest flowering plants with no leaves or stems through some have roots. This can also reproduce varieties of duckweed but they rarely do. It lives in aquatic environment with no habitat. Duckweed can be used to help purify water by controlling algae growth. Nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium helps duckweed grow. It also helps convert waste water and sewage water into pure water. Lastly is they considered it as a weed or pest because of rapidly grows which could stop animals from getting fresh air or oxygen. It reproduces asexually, cloning itself repeatedly. As if the fronds begin to mature them producing new buds in the zone near the centre of the frond. They grow while they’re still attached to parent frond. This cycle of reproduction allows duckweed which is having really fast rate of growth.
The adaptations of for duckweed is the roots where it’s leafy part of the plant that keeps it afloat, the root system incurs no strain on supporting the plant. This nutrient is rich in supporting a dense plant population the decomposition of which kills animal called Eutrophic. There are some things that affect the growth of duckweed like to grow in the dense colonies and on the surface of calm water, that usually more than one type of duckweed species that grow in the same place. On the other hand duckweed plants also bring benefits to provide the habitat for microinveterbrates where this plant grow faster when nitrogen levels that can reduce the amount of pollution in water but still may have negative effects on marine ecosystem.
Duckweed causes a small green plant that forms in blankets on the surface of stagnant water where the high levels of phosphorus and ammonia initiate rapid growth. That transports the tiny plants to other water bodies. The effects of duckweed growth in many things rate at which duckweed grows which nutrients change the rate of growth and overall growth, as will colour, amount, type and intensity of light, temperature of liquid substrate, rate of water flow, humidity, type of substrate and many other factors.
Aim:
The aim is to record the data growth of Duckweed and see what nutrients help duckweed grow quicker. Phosphorus, nitrogen and distilled water will be examined in this investigation to see if duckweed will grow or die and what will be the effect of its rapid growth using these nutrients. Also is to investigate the factors that affect the growth of Duckweed in South East Queensland.
Hypothesis:
- It is hypothesised that the duckweed growing in the water containing the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus will grow faster than the duckweed growing in the water no added nutrients. This is because the ability for duckweed to grow is highly affected by nutrient availability and grows better in electrophic conditions.
Variable
(Independent Variable)
- Whether the duckweed are going to be put in normal water or water with added nutrients and which type of nutrients it will be.
- The effect of the variables grows on low nutrient water and is high fibre but contain low crude protein. In which duckweed respond quickly to the availability of nutrients they often have highly variables of some nutrients which make them difficult to prescribe the amount needed for.
- Duckweed plants grow faster when nitrogen levels are high in water. Pollution significantly increases nitrogen levels. Duckweed plants can reduce the amount of pollution in water, but still may have negative effects on marine ecosystems because of increased growth.
Dependent Variable
(Quantities)
- Approximately how much duckweed is in the water each day. Measured by counting the approximate number of duckweed. Grids may be used later on the experiment where there is too many duckweed to count.
(Qualitative)
- Photos of the duckweed growth over time and when something significant happens to the rate at which the duckweed grows. (Example: The cover of duckweed grows significantly overnight.)
Materials:
- 6 containers
- 3 Litres of water
- Nitrogen, Phosphorus and distilled water
- Spoon to mix
- Beaker
- Stirring Rod
- Duckweeds
- Cylinder
- Tape
Method
1: Collected equipment needed for setting up the experiment
2: Labeled containers with the nutrients which were being used, nitrogen, phosphorus and distilled water
3: Measured the right amount of nitrogen and mixed in with the distilled water repeated with the phosphorus
4: Poured the necessary amount of the water into the containers (300mls each)
4: Then added 10 duckweed to each container using the tongs and tweezers repeated to all six containers were completed
5: Than mixed the duckweed around the water so they were separated and started the experiment for day one.
Result Table
Discussion:
The data recorded showed how duckweed grew and died in different days. They observed and examined this in 12 days to see which nutrients would help duckweed grow at optimum speed and how these nutrients affected them. Based on what was stated in the graph, Nitrogen rapidly decreased most days due to its trace of ammonia concentrations to 0.08g N/L that caused high crude protein content of duckweed. With this the ammonia preferentially dropped at the presence of the relatively high nitrate concentrations mixed with it shows and demonstrates lower growth rates. This enriched waters that tends to be concentrated form at the pH levels were the plant growth efficient in anaerobic and aerobic waters. In which plants tolerates ammonia that not have been clearly demonstrated as it is a suitable fertilizer and rapidly converted to ammonia under normal conditions. Second to be is the result of Phosphorus where it growth rapidly throughout the following days unlike the nitrogen got a limited although its quantitative requirement for maximum growth is generally low. It is pretty obvious that Phosphorus had fast growing duckweed in nutrient which is rich in high water efficient sink however it required for rapid growth. It saturated of phosphate uptake by duckweed occurs at available concentrations of 0.016/g. Duckweed growth isn’t sensitive to phosphorus once an adequate threshold has been reached. Lastly is the distilled water where it got the second largest amount of duckweed they may not grow faster as the phosphorus nutrient does it still developed and gain a bit each day.
The result is quite poor; it doesn’t meet what we expected it will be. Just like the number of duckweed in each containers got drop every single day and some of them died though we don’t have enough data to show how much duckweed counted in each day died. That maybe because of the amount of concentrations we put in each containers cause them to die easily. Another problem we encountered is the small dirt thing floating in the water with the duckweed; I think it is one of the problems why some of them got a poor result as weren’t expected to be.
Conclusions:
I think my hypothesis support our result and aim for this experiment. We did observed which of the nutrients got the fast rapid growth of duckweed and which one has the fair amount of duckweed. As what it shown the table and graph result, Phosphorus got the highest and fast growth rate of duckweed within 12 days and Nitrogen got the lowest amount of duckweed for those days. On the other hand there are some errors like some of the duckweed died due to the high concentration just for example the nitrogen don’t grew because of too much amount of nutrients added to it.
