The present invention provides methods and compositions for the transformation of duckweed plastids. The compositions and methods of the invention are useful in increasing the recombinant protein production capacity of the duckweed expression system. The compositions of the invention include transformed duckweed plastids and transplastomic duckweed cells and plants, as well as nucleic acid constructs useful for transforming duckweed plastids. The invention also provides methods for introducing one or more heterologous nucleotide sequences into a duckweed plastome.
