Marine macroalgae, also referred to as seaweeds or kelp, are a group of exceptionally diverse aquatic plants. Macroalgae can be found along nearly all coastlines around the globe and in some cases also in the open ocean. They have traditionally been used for food and feed, as well as fertilizer. In 2016, the world produced approximately 26 million wet metric tons of seaweed, primarily through highly labor-intensive farming techniques. While macroalgae production has increased six-fold over the past quarter-century, the current state of macroalgae “mariculture” is not capable of achieving the scale, efficiency and production costs necessary to support a seaweed-to-fuels industry.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution leads a DOE ARPAe-funded project to develop a selective breeding program for sugar kelp, Saccharina latissima, one of the most commercially important kelp species. The goal of the project is to improve productivity and cost effectiveness of seaweed farming. The breeding program has built a germplasm library with > 800 gametophytes ("parent plants") that produce a 20% to 30% yield improvement over plants currently farmed. By using a combination of novel rapid phenotyping, a new reference genome, genome-wide association studies, and genome prediction methods, the team expects to accelerate the production of improved kelp while decreasing the number of costly field evaluations.
Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, ARPAe MARINER project contract number DE-AR0000915.
