June 2023 – Swapro

ICAR-CMFRI’s Seaweed Farming Enterprise in Lakshadweep Turns Huge Success

In a major achievement in fostering the efforts of the Government of India for the development of the seaweed enterprise as another driver of the economy of Lakshadweep, the commercial-scale pilot seaweed farming guided by the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Cochin has turned out to be a huge success in the large-scale pre-feasibility studies during 2022-23 season. The endeavour of the TSC-Purple Turtle Company, Tuticorin, aided by the ICAR-CMFRI and the Lakshadweep Administration has the potential to boost the economy of the archipelago and provide a new source of income for the local community, especially women.

The seaweed farming enterprise was initially launched in Chetlath, one of the smaller islands in Lakshadweep with a population of nearly 2,500. Six plots of 100 tube nets each were established by the end of September 2022, with a seed stock size of 3 tons per plot. The first harvest yielded nearly 15 tons in 45 days. The entire harvest was used to expand the farm horizontally, increasing the farm size to 30 plots with 3,000 net tubes by the end of November 2022. Subsequent harvests were done every 30-45 days, and the farm was further expanded in the same atoll as well as in the neighbouring atolls of Kiltan and Kadmat.

Women were the main workforce, and nearly 20 of them from different Self Help Groups were employed to carry out various farm activities such as preparing tube nets, seeding, and harvesting. The program generated nearly 3,000 man-days during the 8-month culture period, with an average daily earning of Rs 380.

Active involvement of women draws the attention of the Hon’ble President

The overwhelming response of the women to seaweed farming recently caught the attention of the Honourable President of India Smt. Droupathi Murmu during her maiden visit to the archipelago in April 2023. A delegation of the women beneficiaries of the seaweed enterprise development programme was invited for a meeting with her on 19th April 2023 at Kavaratti.

The potential of seaweed cultivation in Lakshadweep has been known from the research and development programmes of the ICAR-CMFRI since August 2020 under the auspices of the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) of the ICAR, New Delhi. The enterprise is currently passing through the initial phase of exploration, capacity building, and foundation development. The ICAR-CMFRI, in collaboration with the Department of Fisheries, Lakshadweep, and private companies conducted farming trials to determine the growth performance of commercially important, indigenous species like Gracilaria edulis and Acanthophora spicifera in each island over the seasons. During this period, local men and women from many of the islands were trained in seaweed farming in large numbers. Periodic consultations were held with the prospective stakeholders, local farmers, the seaweed industry, researchers, and the Government, where the results and experiences were shared and the way forward was discussed. This in turn led to M/s TSC-Purple Turtle Company, Tuticorin carrying out the first-ever commercial-scale pilot farming in the island territory.

The ICAR-CMFRI suggests a two-pronged approach for developing the seaweed enterprise in the islands. Private companies farm commercially high-value indigenous species on their own using local people as their workforce, promoting the local societies or individuals to farm for companies on contract farming mode. This will provide an additional livelihood for the local community, especially the women. The Lakshadweep Administration is actively popularising the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) and Mudra Loans programme of the Government of India in Lakshadweep in the fisheries sector. This is expected to have a positive impact on the development of the seaweed enterprise.

The establishment of seaweed hatcheries, seed reserves, seaweed health monitoring facilities, and incubation facilities for mariculture, as well as the processing and value addition of seaweeds, are expected to contribute to the development of the seaweed enterprise. Research needs to be continued on standardising the protocols for newer species of seaweeds of varying utilities. The ICAR-CMFRI is working with the NITI Aayog as well as the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Govt. of India, and the U.T of Lakshadweep Administration to generate scientific information, build skills, provide technical support services, and draw policy guides for sustainable and inclusive seaweed enterprise development in the island territory.

(Source: ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Cochin )

(Disclaimer: The contents of this article are not original and have been taken from icar.org.in. This article is only a way to spread information.)

Why big names are backing seaweed-based biostimulants?

Written by Rob Fletcher (Senior Editor, The Fish Site)

Seaweed’s greatest potential to be both commercially successful and environmentally positive is using it as a biostimulant in order to increase terrestrial crops yields, while reducing the traditional agriculture sector’s reliance on chemical fertilisers, rather than as a means of sequestering blue carbon.

So argued Lisa Boulton, ocean regeneration lead at Nestle Purina Petcare, at a panel discussion that took place at the Blue Food Innovation Summit in London last week. As she explained, while Nestle has struggled to integrate significant quantities of seaweeds directly into their product portfolio they are promoting the use of seaweed-based biostimulants within their existing supply chains.

“One of the misconceptions about seaweed is that it’s a low carbon solution… while it has strong potential to be a low carbon solution, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to decarbonise parts of the industry – whether in the cultivation or the processing. But where it’s strongest is its very high potential to displace other higher carbon materials or ingredients,” she observed.

Seaweed is seen by Nestle as having great potential to help the company work towards net zero carbon emissions in their products. While the company does use seaweed-derived ingredients for texturisation, she thinks it will be more testing to increase the overall seaweed content of many of their pet foods.

“It’s more difficult to alter recipes within petfood than it is to reduce the footprint of existing ingredients. So, one of the uses of seaweeds that we’re looking at the moment is the potential use of seaweed biostimulants within our existing supply chains,” explained Boulton.

“We kicked off with a three-year post-doc research study on seaweed biostimulants at the beginning of this year and we’re hoping to show the potential to improve plant performance, to increase soil health, to maintain yields while switching to regenerative agriculture,” she added.

She also noted that her own role also involves looking at seaweed’s potential to directly improve biodiversity and reduce acidification in the seas.

“You’ve got the ocean benefits from the seaweed itself, but more importantly we can use it to improve productivity and improve land use, as well as reduce the use of inorganic fertilisers – and a lot of the problems in the oceans are coming from the overuse of and excess nutrient run-off from inorganic fertilisers. So if we can tackle the problem at both ends we can turn from a vicious cycle to a regenerative cycle overall. It makes lots of sense both on land and in the oceans,” Boulton explained.

“It is the displacement of terrestrial-produced feedstocks and food products that are the real climate opportunity, we believe, for seaweed on a macro-scale” Paul Dobbins, director of impact investing, WWF

Paul Dobbins, director of impact investing at WWF, was broadly in agreement – noting that the charity is concentrating on using seaweed to displace other less sustainably produced ingredients, rather than the ability of seaweed to sequester carbon directly.

“It is the displacement of terrestrial-produced feedstocks and food products that are the real climate opportunity, we believe, for seaweed on a macro-scale,” he pointed out.

One of the key potentials for seaweed, according to Mike Williamson, CEO of Cascadia Seaweed, is to regenerate soil health.

“After many, many years of harsh synthetic fertilsers soils are dead and the biostimulants help the soils become living again and that improves the carbon draw down,” he noted.

However, he added that not all seaweed species are effective biostimulants.

“There’s a fairly small sub-set of seaweeds that will act as biostimulants that will help the plant grow better and be a more natural crop,” he explained.

Tropical seaweed success

Shrikumar Suryanarayan, CEO of Sea6 Energy*, is also concentrating on producing biostimulants from the tropical seaweeds that they grow and harvest in Indonesia.

“If there’s one application of seaweed that has the potential to really impact climate change is the ability for seaweed biostimulants to reduce fertiliser usage and to improve the resistance of plants to pests and diseases without using insecticides and pesticides,” he pointed out.

Sea6, he went on to explain, are producing a line of proprietary tropical seaweed-based biostimulants, but these are not replacements for fertilisers. It’s a distinct new category of plant input – alongside fertilisers and pesticides – which helps plants to uptake nutrients and use them more efficiently, but has only recently been recognised in legislation in many regions – including the EU and India, but not yet in the US.

“I think that all agricultural input regulating authorities will now have to being out biostimulant legislation, but that involves a challenge – we have to understand exactly why these biostimulants work: what is the active ingredient, what is the science behind that and that a whole new approach compared to how seaweed biostimulants or extracts have been used before,” he said.

*Sea6 Energy is, like Hatch, part of Aqua-Spark’s investment portfolio, but The Fish Site retains editorial independence.

(Disclaimer: This article has been taken from The Fish Site and does not belong to Swapro. The link to the original article has been given at the beginning of the post.)