Research Projects

The ever-growing demands for food feed and chemicals developed a concern to find additional sources of raw materials other than traditional crops. The oceans cover 70% of Earth, but they yield only 1.5% (120 million metric tons (mt) of the 7.6 billion mt of food produced each year; thus, attention has turned to utilize ocean resources for a sustainable future has massive potential. Presently, seaweed cultivation and its utilization are considered a potential blue economy development sector. The current global seaweed harvest is estimated at 34.7 million tons (wet), and it has doubled in the last 15 years while seaweed harvest in India reduced to half. Many countries such as China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea traditionally use seaweeds as food as seaweeds are rich sources of proteins, minerals, carbohydrates, and vitamins. Subsequently, certain countries like Sweeden, Norway, and Israel started to produce hygienic seaweed biomass for edible application using land-based cultivation systems. In India, only certain seaweeds such as Kappaphycus alvarezii and Gracilaria spp. that have a property of vegetative propagation are cultivated on a limited scale. At the same time, nutritionally important species are still not grown due to the lack of efficient seedlings production techniques and land-based cultivation systems. The proposed research is about developing efficient methods for adequate seedlings production for nutritionally important seaweeds species such Porphyra/Phycocalidia, Monostroma and Enteromorpha and developing a land-based cultivation system for hygienic seaweed biomass production for edible applications.