Abstract

APONTE, H.. Productivity of Limnobium laevigatum (Hydrocharitaceae) under laboratory conditions. Polibotánica [online]. 2017, n.44, pp.157-166. ISSN 1405-2768.  https://doi.org/10.18387/polibotanica.44.12.

Limnobium laevigatum (Hydrocharitaceae) is a freely floating aquatic plant characterized by rapid growth and its potential use as forage. Understanding the specie’s productivity and proposing growth models that take resource limits into account, would allow for the evaluation of the plant for its use in large-scale forage systems. The aim of this study was to estimate the productivity of Limnobium laevigatum (biomass, carbon and protein content) under laboratory conditions, and to establish a mathematical model describing this growth under limited conditions. We initially designed an experiment to determine the carrying capacity (K) of the species under laboratory conditions. Then, non-linear regression data analysis (Logistics, Sine selected model, as well as from proteins and carbon tissue content, were used to calculate its productivity. Results showed that Limnobium laevigatum, under laboratory conditions, can pro-duce 0.19 g/cm2 of fresh biomass, equivalent to 2.83x10-3 g/cm2 of protein and 3.96x10-3 g/cm2 of carbon. The extrapolation of these results, places the plant productivity (1.28 T/ha/year of proteins) within the production range of forage crops. These results reinforce previous observations, indicating that this species is useful for fodder purposes. In addition, the calculation of this species’ carbon capture capacity (1.79 T/ha/year of carbon) evidenced its potential use for the latter purpose, since Limnobium laevigatum capture rate is comparable to the ones from ecosystems destined for carbon sequestration.

Keywords : carbon sequestration; forage; hydrophytes; physiology; productivity.

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