Project Overview

Seaweed, or “macroalgae”, has long been recognised as a valuable source of diverse bioactive compounds and has great potential to be used in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and functional foods. However, until now, seaweed has been underexploited in Europe due to the challenges of expanding seaweed biomass production: costs need to be reduced, scales of production need to be increased, quality improved, and seaweed biomass needs to be successfully refined into multiple useful products. If these issues can be addressed, seaweed biomass production could become more economically and environmentally sustainable.

The overall objective of the GENIALG project is to boost the European Blue Economy by designing high-yielding seaweed cultivation systems. GENIALG aims to increase the production and sustainable exploitation of two high biomass yielding species of European seaweed: the brown alga Saccharina latissima (also known as sugar kelp) and the green alga Ulva spp. (often called sea lettuce).

GENIALG is the first industry-driven project bringing together pioneering companies in large-scale integrated European biorefineries and experts in seaweed cultivation, genetics and metabolomics to boost the seaweed industry.

GENIALG will combine available knowledge in seaweed biotechnology with reliable eco-friendly tools and methods to scale up current small cultivation seaweed operations.

The technical and economic feasibility of producing large and sustainable volumes of high-quality S. latissima and Ulva spp. seaweed biomass will be demonstrated in several European regions, to capitalise on the commercial potential of nutrient rich seaweed compounds.

Two pilot pre-industrial seaweed biorefinery plants will provide vital seaweed compounds for a wide range of products such as cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, food and feed ingredients, fine and specialty chemicals, additives and blends such as gels, as well as precursors for biodegradable plastics.

GENIALG will closely monitor the environmental conditions and their associated biodiversity at the seaweed farms to measure the impact of the crop species and their provision of additional services to these ecosystems.

By enhancing the supply of high-quality seaweed biomass, it will be possible to deliver a range of diverse seaweed-derived chemical compounds for existing and new applications to meet rising market demand.
GENIALG will help lead the way in the Blue Biotechnology sector in Europe, while addressing social acceptability and competition for maritime space.

The economic competitiveness of multiple European industries will be strengthened by supporting new jobs, upskilling, growth and investment in the blue economy, while ensuring environmental sustainability.

The GENIALG cross-sectoral partnership supports an integrated and sustainable approach by:

• Further developing appropriate genomic and post-genomic tools to identify and study genetic and targeted traits able to fulfil industrial needs.
• Providing existing experimental and large-scale seaweed biomass production sites throughout European waters.
• Involving a large diversity of private companies already positioned in the seaweed sector individually for different applications (texturants, feed, agriculture, bioplastics, pharmaceuticals…) in order to strengthen interactions for developing a bio-refinery concept and promote efficient and sustainable exploitation of seaweed biomass.

As pointed out in the workplan schematised in Figure 1, GENIALG will cover both upstream production and downstream processing of seaweed for manufacturing new algae-based products for the market and will increase the social acceptance of this novel seaweed sector.

• Cultivation: Upstream seaweed production where development of new technologies for germplasm preservation and breeding, cultivation, harvesting and storage will be demonstrated.
• Biorefinery: Development of new methods for downstream processing of seaweeds, including pre-treatment, fractionation, extraction, purification and detailed characterisation of defined chemical compounds and polymers, as well as fermentation of left-over sugars to added-value products in a step-by-step manner.
• Social acceptance: Promotion of socio-environmental benefits of seaweed farming and activities to support/encourage dissemination, stakeholder engagement, knowledge transfer, outreach and capacity building will also be decisive to alleviate the current situation in the EU which precludes the accession to new concessions and therefore leads to a lack of space for cultivating seaweeds.

Figure 1 The general concept and methodology of GENIALG are summarised on this diagram that displays the workflow of knowledge and technology development that will allow to reach the specific objectives of GENIALG.