Assegurar um futuro sustentável para a aquacultura de Laminaria ochroleuca.

Seaweed farming is anticipated to increase dramatically with the growing market interest in seaweed resources. However, main species of interest can’t be farmed in southern Europe and the adverse impacts of climate change are already affecting seaweed production in the world (Chung et al. 2017) and this will continue as more frequent and extreme weather events are expected in the future (Meehl & Tebaldi 2004). Thus, the emerging seaweed aquaculture sector in Europe will face an enormous challenge to meet the demand for biomass in the midst of climate change. This sector needs to urgently advance and diversify and adapt to climate change to ensure increased productivity and to make it a successful and competitive industry. Asian countries are starting to produce environmental tolerant cultivars of Saccharina spp., but almost no studies have been performed for species with economic interest in Europe, particularly in southern Europe. This project aims to fill this gap, helping to enhance the environmental adaptability of the most promising kelp in southern Europe for aquaculture, native Laminaria ochroleuca ("Golden kelp”), promoting therefore the development of sustainable and resilient aquaculture in the face of climate change. The specific objectives are: (a) to future-proof strains by screening a large number of L. ochroleuca gametophyte cultures from genetically different phylogroups in Europe for thermal tolerance and cross them to produce offspring with high thermal tolerance (selective breeding), and through priming experiments to develop stress-tolerant strains through stress memory; (b) to study whether there is an association between microbiome diversity and composition and improved thermal tolerance in gametophytes and sporophytes; (c) to perform intra- and interpopulation crosses using parental gametophytes with the desired thermal tolerant phenotypes to move forward beyond the current level of biological understanding on the heritability of the trait between parental gametophytes and sporophytes that is essential to better predict the performance of offspring in breeding protocols and the impact of inbreeding and outbreeding depression; (d) to use genomic selection approaches to guide the breeding program; (e) to identify novel cultivars with both thermal resilience and characteristics of commercial interest (e.g., high growth rates, alginate quality) in aquaculture farms; (f) to study the nutrient bioremediation potential of L. ochroleuca in land-based finfish farming and the microbial benefits for water quality and fish health; (g) to optimize a cryopreservation protocol for the long-term storage of the parental gametophytes identified as generating thermally tolerant progeny to ensure a resource for cultivation. The project will develop breeding and priming methods to improve the environmental adaptability of L. ochroleuca production without applying controversial genetic modifying technology and deliver beneficial microbial communities that improve thermal tolerance and productivity of farmed kelps, by characterizing and comparing the microbiome of thermally tolerant and susceptible gametophytes and sporophytes using state-of-the-art metagenomics. The project is expected to unlock the potential of native L. ochroleuca aquaculture in Southern Europe by providing thermal tolerant strains with high productivity, increasing the socio-economic value of kelps.