Abstract
MANY will have read with interest the recent proposals1 concerning the possible use of plankton for human or livestock food. There is, however, an entirely different aspect of the subject which ought to be considered and would at least in one connexion be of far easier application. I refer to the possible use of plankton—especially freshwater phytoplankton—for plant nutrition, and the ‘connexion’ is the small vegetable gardener who has to water his plants. If he does this repeatedly or at least frequently in what is often the easiest way, namely, from open tanks or pans or from the A.R.P. buckets we are supposed to have outside our doors, he may be adding a very useful amount of nutrient matter to the soil, at least during periods of plankton ‘maximum’. In hot sunny weather, just when watering is most necessary, great algal activity (which may turn water green in a day) may be maintained week after week and used almost nightly by merely leaving the green or brownish investment on the inside of the vessel intact when fresh water is added.
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The Times, May 6, 1941, and NATURE, 147, 695, 808 (1941).
Useful bibliographies are given in J. Ecology, 19, 266 (1931) and 28, 491 (1940); see also Ann. App. Biol., 26, 165 (1939).
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POLUNIN, N. Plankton as a Source of Food. Nature 148, 143 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148143c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148143c0
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