Azolla (Salviniaceae) is a small genus of aquatic, heterosporous ferns sometimes referred to as fairy moss, water fern, or duckweed fern owing to its small size and growth habit. Azolla is extremely valuable as a nitrogen fixer and has been used for thousands of years in rice cultivation as a biofertilizer. It is also exceptionally productive in terms of biomass, capable of doubling its biomass in several days--and thus, there is interest in transforming Azolla into a biofuel, a livestock feed, or a product for human consumption.

Sequencing of the Azolla genome was recently crowdfunded. As the first sequenced fern genome, it will be very useful in informing investigations of plant evolution. It will also be valuable in applications in agriculture, bioremediation, and biofuels research (Li and Pryer, 2014).

References:
Li, F.W. and Pryer, K.M. 2014. Crowdfunding the Azolla fern genome project: a grassroots approach. Gigascience 3:16. doi: 10.1186/2047-217X-3-16

Photo credit: IRRI Image via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Azolla_in_petri_dishes.jpg