Meeting: International Conference on Duckweed Research at Rutgers University on August 21-24, 2013

寻求具有低碳足迹的生物质和可再生燃料的可持续生产已成为全球优先事项。创造和采用在生态和经济上可持续的新的生物质和燃料生产平台将是至关重要的，但也是一个巨大的挑战。浮萍是一类水生植物，具有作为燃料和饲料生产原料的巨大潜力。浮萍的主要特征是它们的快速生长速度和使简单的收获策略成为可能的生长特性，这些特征使浮萍成为废物转化为生物质的理想选择。因此，浮萍为创造生物质生产的可持续解决方案提供了一个有希望的平台，可与来自不同来源的废水的回收相结合。形成一个由研究人员和商业开发商组成的协调良好的跨学科社区，将是为浮萍研究和产品开发建立成功团队以造福整个社会的关键一步。在这个项目中，调查人员将组织一次国际会议，重点是整合研究人员和商业利益攸关方，他们正在建立推动浮萍平台的必要资源。从分子生物学、生态学、废水修复到利用浮萍进行饲料和燃料生产的不同领域，本次会议将为数据共享以及思想和技术资源的交流提供一个亲密的论坛。一项重要目标将是为这一领域设立一个国际指导委员会，以促进浮萍研究人员、学生和企业家的教育、研究和培训。该项目的广泛影响预计将激励学术和商业部门的浮萍社区，以实现这种新型微型作物的巨大潜力，创造一个也将是生态健全的新产业。

The quest for sustainable production of biomass and renewable fuels that have low carbon footprints has become a global priority. Creating and adopting new biomass and fuel production platforms that are ecologically and economically sustainable will be essential, but pose a formidable challenge. Duckweed is a family of aquatic plants that holds great potential as a feedstock for fuel and feed production. The chief characteristics that make duckweed ideal for waste-to-biomass conversion are their rapid growth rate and their growth characteristics that enable simple harvest strategies. Duckweed thus provides a promising platform for creating sustainable solutions to biomass production that can be coupled to reclamation of wastewater from different sources. The formation of a well-coordinated, interdisciplinary community of researchers and commercial developers will be a key step toward building successful teams for duckweed research, as well as product development to benefit society-at-large. In this project, the investigators will organize an international conference that focuses1 on integrating researchers and commercial stakeholders that are establishing the essential resources to advance the duckweed platform. From diverse areas of molecular biology, ecology, wastewater remediation, to feed and fuel production using duckweed, this conference will provide an intimate forum for data sharing as well as the cross-fertilization of ideas and technical resources. An important objective will be the creation of an International Steering Committee for this field in order to promote education, research and training of duckweed researchers, students and entrepreneurs. The broader impact of this project is expected to galvanize the duckweed community in both the academic and commercial sectors for realizing the tremendous potential of this novel micro-crop to create a new industry that will also be ecologically sound.