Adapting for Sustainable Success: Seaweed Farmers Pilot Kelp Strains for Emerging Industries

Commodities

• Miscellaneous: seaweed

Practices

• Crop Production: crop improvement and selection, nurseries, plant breeding and genetics

The Seaweed Cultivation Center (SCC), in collaboration with two Maine seaweed farmers and the Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences, will use high-throughput methods to develop four new sugar kelp strains and verify their performance in a commercial-scale ocean farm trial. These strains will be selected for higher-than-average levels of desirable tissue compounds that are in demand for emerging bioextraction markets like biostimulants, personal care products, nutraceuticals, biomaterials, and animal feeds. This iterative approach will also create a data-driven biobank which will serve as the foundation for future selection projects. To compete with existing wild-harvest feedstock for these markets, seaweed farmers must use seed that is reliable from year to year, genetically diverse, and above all, can increase the manufacturing efficiency and quality of end-use products.

The SCC has a state-of-the-art lab and seaweed nursery, historically providing close to 90% of the kelp seed to Maine farmers. Current cultivation practices in the Northeast rely on wild harvesting parental stock and can be likened to a tomato farmer foraging for her seeds in the forest every year. This results in inconsistent crops with divergent morphologies. For this reason, most seaweed growing nations have invested heavily in strain selection, leaving the US at a competitive disadvantage. To be globally competitive, US seaweed farmers must be able to make informed decisions and predictions about what they grow, including the tissue components of the resulting crop. We have spent the last several years conducting experimental-scale projects that optimize kelp seed through selection, seedbanking, data collection, and strategic partnerships with scientific institutions. This project will fast-track the development of four new kelp strains by collaborating with Bigelow's Center for Aquatic Cytometry and farmer partners Nate Johnson and Justin Papkee. The resulting sugar kelp strains from this work will be made available to permitted aquaculture lease holders in the state of Maine at fair market value.

This project's objectives are to create four new strains of sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) that meet the needs of existing bioextraction markets. This will include strains that exhibit higher than average levels of laminarian, fucoidan, alginate, and/or are selected for yield. Our benchmark for a successful strain is one which produces at least 15% higher concentrations of these complex polysaccharides compared to the median values from wild-type seed lots while producing similar or enhanced yields (measured in pounds harvested per foot of cultivation line). These values are both achievable and substantial based on the background variability of these compounds and their value as extracted bio-components. The market value of purified fucoidan can exceed $1,200/kg, and a 15% increase is still within the inner quartile range of wild-type kelp sampled from within the same farm. Piloting and validation will be conducted at commercial scale on partner farmer's farms. Within two years, our goal is to have four strains that have been fully validated from seed to harvest and are ready for market.