Descrizione del progetto
Rafforzare l’acquacoltura delle alghe marine in Europa
La coltivazione di alghe marine è il settore relativo all’acquacoltura che sta crescendo più rapidamente in Europa. L’alga rossa Palmaria palmata è una specie bersaglio dell’industria europea di alghe marine a causa del suo elevato contenuto proteico (tra il 20 % e il 35 %), i minerali essenziali che contiene e l’allettante gusto che la caratterizza. Ciononostante, l’acquacoltura attuale utilizza tuttora varietà di Palmaria selvatiche, raccolte casualmente. Il progetto ASPIRE, del programma di azioni Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA), svilupperà ceppi di alghe marine a crescita rapida mediante lo screening e la caratterizzazione di ceppi di Palmaria solidi e ad alto rendimento. Il progetto impiegherà strumenti avanzati di sequenziamento e bioinformatica (programma TASSEL) al fine di individuare i marcatori genetici e biochimici dei ceppi di Palmaria ad alto rendimento. ASPIRE istituirà un’innovativa banca dati basata sul web (MySQL, VueJS) ed effettuerà sperimentazioni a livello di azienda agricola per convalidare la produttività dei ceppi di alghe marine di alto livello selezionati.
Obiettivo
The ASPIRE project will develop fast growing seaweed strains to strengthen Europe’s potential to thrive in an emerging seaweed aquaculture industry. Seaweed cultivation is the fastest growing aquaculture sector and provides huge potential for market growth in Europe. The red algae Palmaria palmata is one of the target species of a growing European seaweed industry due to its high content of protein (20–35%), essential minerals and its appealing flavour. Recently, there has been significant advancements in the aquaculture procedures for Palmaria, but these approaches are still mainly built on the utilisation of randomly collected wild-types of Palmaria. A targeted strain selection has therefore huge potential to increase the prospects of Palmaria aquaculture in Europe. The objective of the ASPIRE project is to screen and characterise high- yielding and robust Palmaria strains. This will be implemented utilising high-throughput phenotyping technologies using performance screening (growth, morphology characteristics and photosynthetic parameters) and metabolomic analysis (primary/secondary metabolites using GC-MS, spectrophotometer, NMR etc.). These results in conjunction with next generation sequencing (Illumina seq.) and bioinformatics tools (TASSEL pipeline) will be utilised to identify both biochemical and genetic markers of high-yielding Palmaria strains. To ensure that the results have a high impact and find their way to the commercial end-user, the project will establish a novel and easy-to-use web-based database (MySQL, VueJS) specifically designed for use by the aquaculture stakeholders. The ASPIRE project will conduct farm-level trials to validate the advantages of growing the selected elite seaweed strains in terms of productivity and overall biomass quality. The multi-disciplinary project will set the bases for an urgently needed modern seaweed breeding programme to further develop the emerging European seaweed aquaculture sector.
Campo scientifico
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyphycology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinatore
H91 Galway
Irlanda