Tiny aquatic plants are attracting scientific attention for their untapped potential as future food sources, including for space missions.
Some of the world’s smallest flowering plants have found a way to fit the basic architecture of much larger species into a body just a few millimeters (about 0.1 inch) across. Researchers at the University of Nottingham discovered that duckweed retains essential structures found in larger plant shoots, but these components are tightly compressed and fused rather than lost.
Using advanced microscopy and gene expression analysis, the scientists examined how duckweed organizes its remarkably compact body. Their findings, published in Current Biology, challenge the assumption that extreme miniaturization necessarily involves losing parts of a plant’s original structure.
How Duckweed Shrinks Without Losing Its Blueprint
Dr. Anthony Bishopp, who led the research, explained: “We were interested to find out how a complete plant body plan can be packed into such a tiny space. While miniaturization in animals is often associated with the loss of organs or body structures, we have revealed that duckweeds have taken a different route.”
“What surprised us is that, when we looked closely, the basic organization of the shoot was still there. Rather than throwing away parts of the blueprint, duckweed appears to have compressed and fused its components into an incredibly compact plant. That gives us a new way of thinking about how plants can evolve to become so small.”
Tiny Plants With Potential for Future Food Production
Despite their miniature size, duckweeds belong to a group of flowering plants whose relatives include some of the largest herbaceous species. Scientists are increasingly investigating duckweed as a potential source of food and protein, both on Earth and during future space missions.
Unlike major agricultural crops, which have undergone thousands of years of domestication and selective breeding, duckweed remains largely unexplored as a cultivated food source. Its unusual anatomy has also been poorly understood, making it difficult to fully explain how the plant grows and develops. The new findings provide a foundation for investigating these processes and identifying traits that could eventually be improved for cultivation.
Dr. Alex Ware, a co-author of the study, said: “Duckweeds are astonishingly small, so it is tempting to think of them as either primitive plants or simply as having lost parts, but this is not the case. Our research adds to growing evidence from across the research community about this plant and will help efforts to turn them into a future crop.”
Reference: “Miniaturization of duckweeds occurred through compression of the angiosperm body plan” by Alexander Ware, Emily Chan, Rahul Bhosale and Anthony Bishopp, 7 October 2026, Current Biology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.035
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