Our Annual Meeting in Lisbon was the opportunity to introduce our Spring 2022 Grantees to our worldwide community! After a highly competitive evaluation process by our advisory board of seaweed industry experts, the Safe Seaweed Coalition Steering Committee made the final selection. Through the voice of our scientific director Philippe Potin, the Committee was proud to announce them:
- Blue[c]weed in New Caledonia will launch a South Pacific Seaweed Working Group to address safety issues and the lack of standards that may hinder the development and diversification of the seaweed industry in the region.
- Société de Pêche de Sainte-Marie / Nosy Boraha Seaweed (NBS) in Madagascar will create an innovative solution to provide ocean data to understand ecosystem services seaweed farming brings and accelerate the development of sustainable seaweed production.
- National Institute of Marine Sciences and Technologies in Tunisia will enhance tunisian capacities for seaweed production and biotechnology and highlight the seaweed sector potentialities in the South Mediterranean Region.
- GreenWave in USA will develop and promote safe post-harvest handling packaging, and storage best practices and resources for kelp farmers and other industry stakeholders
- Coast 4C in Philippines will pilot a proven typhoon-resistant platform as a sea-based nursery to accelerate biomass recovery of high-quality seedlings in the aftermath of super typhoon Rai (Odette).
- Healthy Seaweed Co. Limited in Tanzania will investigate and assess the nutritional values of seaweed and and seaweed based foods made from Tanzania to increase safety and wellbeing for consumers.
- Ocean Approved LLC in USA will test for heavy metals and nutritional variances at 27 farms over an entire growing season spanning a distance of over 325 km and four natural embayments to inform site selection to minimize heavy-metal uptake and nutritional density on future farms.
- Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research (ISRA) in Senegal will improve processing and cultivation of the rhodophyte Meristhotheca senegalensis, a good source of iodine and carrageenan, to drive further developments in the local seagriculture.
Selected proposals will join our portfolio of supported projects and contribute to the improvement of safety in the global seaweed sector. Results will be made publicly available to maximize global impact. Our next call for proposals will open in Fall 2022, stay tuned!
