Harnessing plant diversity is essential for modern agriculture. Duckweeds have attracted increasing attention as novel crops with applications ranging from food and feed production to molecular farming. Species complexes, which may involve hybridization and polyploidization events, represent an important source of hidden genetic diversity that can be utilized for crop improvement. Recently,...
Duckweeds (Lemnaceae) are emerging as promising crops because of their exceptional biomass productivity and diverse applications. However, progress toward duckweed domestication has been limited by a poor understanding of their sexual reproduction, which is essential to improve genetic information via breeding. Recent genomic studies unexpectedly revealed numerous interspecific hybrids and...
Evolutionary studies mainly focus on the acquisition of new traits in highly diversified plant lineages, with comparatively few studies showing how these traits have undergone secondary loss. Duckweeds provide a tractable system to address this within angiosperms, as they have gradually lost the ability to grow roots and vasculature. These lost traits are regulated by auxin in other...
