Seaweed breeding programs and progress in eastern Asian countries

Abstract

The use of seaweeds as human food in eastern Asian countries has a long history, stretching back over a thousand years. However, it was not until the late 1940s that cultivation of seaweeds in near-shore coastal areas began. Due to their location, the Korean peninsula, the Japanese islands and the Chinese coasts share a similar seaweed flora in their coastal waters, and it is not surprising that seaweed species chosen for cultivation, methods of farming and post-harvest processing in these countries have a lot in common. In 2016, the total seaweed production in these three countries reached 16,218,406 t, approximately 53.8% of global seaweed production (FAO). In the course of seaweed farming development in eastern Asia, the development and use of seaweed cultivars have contributed significantly to the seaweed farming industry in terms of improving both the biomass yield and the quality of the food products produced. In this article, the recent development of cultivar-related research and applications practised in Korea, Japan and China are reviewed with particular reference to the key commercial species: Saccharina japonica, Pyropia spp., Undaria spp., Cladosiphon okamurarus, and Nemacystus decipiens. In the past 21 years, 47 certified seaweed cultivars have been used in commercial cultivation in these countries. While much of the development effort has focused on increasing yields, a current emphasis in cultivar breeding programs is to increase the quality of farmed seaweed products. More recently, molecular analyses have been integrated into these programs and have become indispensable tools in the breeding process.

Phyconomy: the extensive cultivation of seaweeds, their sustainability and economic value, with particular reference to important lessons to be learned and transferred from the practice of eucheumatoid farming

“…Inasmuch as the above issues are lessons for carrageenophyte production, the same phyconomic principles apply to largescale cultivation of other common seaweed crops e.g. Porphyra/Pyropia, Laminaria/Saccharina and Undaria (see Hwang et al 2019).…”

Opportunities, challenges and future directions of open-water seaweed aquaculture in the United States

“…Seaweed aquaculture history in the United States is relatively recent compared to Asian countries such as China, Korea and Japan (see Hwang et al 2019). However, seaweed aquaculture globally is a fast-growing industry.…”

“…Developments of gametophytebased seed banks and new strains of kelp produced via hybridisation may be critical to help resolve such issues. With these technologies, temperature-tolerant kelp germplasm could be provided to growers in southern New England, similar to what has been done traditionally in Asia (Hwang et al 2017(Hwang et al , 2018(Hwang et al , 2019Zhang et al 2016Zhang et al , 2018. Kelps have been the major seaweed aquaculture species in the United States for several reasons; for example, publicly funded cultivation technologies for nursery and open-water farming have been made available through open-source portals (Connecticut Sea Grant 2014;Flavin et al 2013;Redmond et al 2014a).…”

Population genetics of sugar kelp in the Northwest Atlantic region using genome-wide markers

“…Besides their important ecological roles and the well-established kelp cultivation practices in coastal Asian countries, there is growing interest in macroalgal cultivation in Europe, South America, and throughout the USA (Augyte et al, 2017;Buschmann et al, 2017;Campbell et al, 2019;Grebe et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2019;Geocke et al, 2020). Specifically, there are efforts to selectively breed kelp for large-scale food and bioenergy production (Bjerregaard et al, 2016;Hwang et al, 2019;Geocke et al, 2020) and increasing demand for germplasm banking to support future cultivation as well as restoration research (Barrento et al, 2016;Wade et al, 2020). To assist in the establishment of this nascent industry, an understanding of genetic variation across wild kelp populations is essential.…”