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Abstract

Seaweed aquaculture is a rapidly growing component of the blue economy, with sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) emerging as a promising bio-energy crop in the United States. This chapter summarizes five years (2018–2024) of ARPA-E’s Macroalgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources (MARINER) Sugar Kelp Breeding Project, a multi-institutional effort to develop genomic selection (GS) strategies to improve sugar kelp harvest yield and other commercially important traits. The project established a genetically diverse base population of over 1,000 uni-clonal gametophytes from the Gulf of Maine and Southern New England, built high-throughput phenotyping and genotyping pipelines, and applied GS models to accelerate breeding cycles and improve selection accuracy. Those gametophytes contributed to creating >500 crosses that were tested through six nursery and farm culture seasons. Twenty crosses exhibited yields >15 kg/m or about three times the average commercial farm yield in the Gulf of Maine. Using a patent pending process dependent on natural mutations and no genetic modification, another twenty crosses were selected for nonreproductive traits. Many US State regulatory authorities will not approve the farming of selectively-bred kelp unless they are non-reproductive kelp. The State of Maine, for instance, refused to permit research collaborations with farmers and academics for this project 5 years in a row. Multi-year, multi-site trials revealed significant genotype-by-environment interactions, highlighting the importance of regional breeding strategies. The project also generated a reference genome (https://mycocosm.jgi.doe.gov/SlaSLCT1FG3_1/SlaSLCT1FG3_1.info.html), a public database (www.sugarkelpbase.org) with genotypic and phenotypic data associated with annual farm trials, and a publicly accessible germplasm bank at the National Center for Marine Algae at Bigelow Ocean Labs to support future breeding efforts. Together, these advances demonstrate the power of genomic tools in seaweed breeding and lay the groundwork for a more sustainable and commercially scalable kelp aquaculture industry to support the advancement of US energy interests.

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