Michael Y. Roleda
Algal Ecophysiology Laboratory (AlgaE Lab), The Marine Science Institute, College of Science,
University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines
Email: myroleda@up.edu.ph
Most eucheumatoid cultivars used by seaweed farmers have been vegetatively propagated since the 1970s. Vegetative propagation from cuttings provides benefits by ensuring genetic uniformity and consistency in quality, and avoidance of cost associated with sexual reproduction. However, clonal propagation is also detrimental to fitness making the entire cultivar more susceptible to disease due to lack of genetic variation. The University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute (UPMSI) is holding culture collections of different strains/ cultivars of eucheumatoid at the Seaweed Culture Laboratory and Gene Bank (SCL&GB) and at the Bolinao Marine Laboratory (BML) outdoor land-based nursery (OLBN). Most of these are wild parental strains and their progenies, and some commercially cultivated strains. However, the collection, collation and maintenance of these assets are costly, and time and labor intensive. Hence, the genetic characterization and biobanking of different commercially cultivated and wild indigenous cultivars, production of F1 generations from reproductive plants, and their physiological and biochemical characterization were made possible through funding from different local (Institutional and University grants), national (CHED-LAKAS) and international (e.g., GlobalSeaweedSTAR, Sea6Energy, and Safe Seaweed Coalition) research endowments. In partnership with the social enterprise Coast4C and other partner seaweed farmers, they receive promising new cultivars for sea-based grow out and evaluation in their community-based nurseries that will eventually provide seedstocks for distribution throughout their growing network of seaweed farmers. Furthermore, in discourse with different stakeholders (e.g., the academe, R&D, NGOs, and processors), we are consolidating a Southeast Asian coalition to establish a regional eucheumatoid initiative responsible for the development of high quality and resilient seedstocks and the inception of a model that will facilitate their fair accessibility to farmers to boost global eucheumatoid production to meet the increasing demand for high quality biomass for various industrial applicati