Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the united states needs to increase…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the united states needs to increase sustainable resource production to alleviate stresses on energy and food availability and prices caused by increasing population levels and rising global temperatures. Aquaculture is a one of the potential paths to produce more sustainable resources while not requiring arable land, freshwater, pesticides and herbicides. Aquaculture now accounts for more than half of all seafood production, and interest in aquaculture domestically has recently increased. The U.S. Has a huge amount of available nutrient rich ocean space in its exclusive economic zone. Seaweed is one of the prime targets for increased aquaculture production. Seaweed is now farmed globally with an estimated $8 billion market, with farm production increasing greatly in the U.S. Over the past ten years. Kelp, a large brown macroalgae (seaweed), is an attractive target for farmers because IT grows very quickly and has many downstream uses, including human food, feedstocks for biofuel, animal feed, biostimulants for agriculture, extracts for pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. Transforming some of the available ocean space into kelp farms will help sustainable produce more resources, create new jobs, and increase domestic energy security.kelp farming is presently concentrated in asia, with large-scale cultivation of kelp starting in the 1950S. The nursery and farming practices developed since then are being readily applied to farms in the U.S.these traditional methods rely on releasing spores from fertile kelp tissue gathered from natural kelp beds directly onto kelp seedstring before the seedstring is manually wrapped around farm longlines. Then, the kelp is harvested after ~6 months of growing on the farm and sent to downstream processors. However, the traditional kelp cultivation and farming processes are running into production problems in china created by inbreeding, non standard nursery and farming practices, and poor seed management. New methods, such as using seed stock maintained in a nursery, have emerged to potentially combat these production problems. By applying lessons from the green revolution and agriculture in general, we hope that standardizing kelp nursery and farming practices will greatly benefit the nascent domestic kelp industry.new methods of kelp nursery cultivation and farming have emerged over the past ten years. These new nursery methods can produce kelp seeds clonally in the nursery, thus ending the reliance of kelp farmers having to collect material from wild kelp beds before each farming season, and increasing the amount of kelp seed a nursery can produce. New farming methods, including a robotic seeder, aim to reduce human labor cost by deploying kelp seed lines underwater. This robotic seeder should also increase the density of the kelp on the farm, as less kelp will be lost due to rough ocean conditions using these traditional outplanting methods. We aim to explore the potential of standardizing new kelp farming and NUR, sery practices that can increase kelp production by directly comparing new methods of kelp cultivation with the more traditional methods on a commercial farm. To do this, we will outplant 200' of seeded kelp line for the four following growth treatments onto our collaborating kelp farm (ocean's balance, located off biddeford, maine): traditional nursery (spores) with traditional outplanting (manual), traditional nursery outplanted with the robotic seeder, lab grown seeds with traditional outplanting, and lab grown seeds outplanted with the robotic seeder. We will compare the amount of biomass produced by each of the growth treatments to determine if new nursery methods are a viable solution for kelp farming going forward. We will also look at carbon and nitrogen composition to determine if different nursery and outplanting methods change the composition of the farmed kelp.at the conclusion of the project, we will determine the performance of new nursery and cultivation methods against traditional methods. This project will help guide the domestic kelp industry as IT continues to rapidly expand. The new cultivations methods are much more scalable than traditional methods as well. Switching to lab grown seeds can easily increase the amount of seedline a nursery can produce while also decreasing reliance of wild kelp beds for seed material. High labor costs for farmers limit the amount of potential kelp farms in the U.S., so decreasing kelp farm labor costs by using the robot seeder should reduce the barriers of entering the industry, and the fast seeding by the robot seeder can also help increase the size of potential kelp farms. We will share our findings with kelp farmers and related stakeholders, with the goal of our outreach being industry standardization of nursery and farming practices.