Growing plants in sugar water for fun and profit

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

3 pointskylebenzle4 comments

2017, with dandelions.

> Plants grew significantly faster in liquid media than on solid media. Addition of sucrose from 0.25 to 2% was correlated with an increase in biomass accumulation in plants grown in liquid media.

i suspect other species will have different results.

They mention 7 days dwell time for their liquid media too; I don't want to contemplate trying to keep a 2% sugar syrup from growing lots of other things for a week. Bet that stuff will ferment given any opportunity whatsoever.

Your suspicion is wildly incorrect, all (as far as I know) plants can utilize a liquid carbon source, model species are used specifically because they react similar to the vast majority of other species in their category.

Media must be sterile as described in the paper, obviously.

sterility is the killer for my closet scale experiments. i aim for "clean enough for robust things to survive"

Plants are able to get 100% of their carbon from their roots in the form of dissolved sugar, meaning they can be grown in total darkness!

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