By Olivia Rogers
What if hog farmers could reduce the chances of lagoon overflow while also generating extra income?
North Carolina is the nation’s third-largest hog-producing state, and a big challenge hog farmers face is lagoon overflow on their farms. A new approach by an NC State University professor aims to make animal producers’ waste management practices more sustainable and less stressful. Ryan Sartor’s idea involves leveraging domesticated duckweed (Lemna) varieties in wastewater lagoons to prevent overflows on farms and harvesting the duckweed as a by-product.
Sartor, an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the departments of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry and Biological and Agricultural Engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has been working to domesticate duckweed since 2022. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has awarded two grants to Sartor to help support the research.
“Breeding is one of the essential things that has to happen to make a new crop,” Sartor says, noting that one of the key advantages from domestication and breeding is yield stability. “The ability to predict what our yield’s gonna be, is super valuable in agriculture.”
Source : ncsu.edu