NEW TOOLS FOR SELECTIVELY IMPROVING STRAINS OF SUGAR KELP Saccharina latissima FOR FOOD AND FUEL

Scott Lindell*, E. Fischell, S. Augyte, D. Bailey, J-L. Jannink, B. Smith, G. Wikfors, C. Yarish
Biology and Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Departments, Woods Hole  Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole MA 02543, USA  
slindell@whoi.edu

As a part of ARPA-E's MARINER program, a team of scientists and entrepreneurs is pursuing a selective breeding program to improve the productivity and composition of sugar kelp, Saccharina latissimi, which could serve as feedstock for biofuels. ARPA-E's and our goal is to develop tools and a pathway toward low-cost (< $100/DWT) seaweed feedstock that could supply 10% of US transportation fuels. Current markets include human and animal food.

Our project will develop several complementary tools to reach this objective. To facilitate high-throughput creation of family crosses, the NOAA Milford Lab and UCONN are developing cell sorting methods to efficiently isolate and clone gametophytes. USDA/Cornell and HudsonAlpha will employ PacBio and Illumina sequencing to create a deep-sequenced reference genome and establish a variant catalog for our founding populations and families. WHOI, UCONN and GreenWave will oversee field trials of 144 families (from 12 different 'strains') planted in triplicate plots on two farm sites (nearshore and offshore) over two growing seasons. The resulting family phenotypic data will be associated with genetic markers (GWAS), and we will identify variants significantly associated with primary productivity and composition traits. A goal is to develop methods to predict offspring (SPs or sporophytes) performance based upon genotype and breeding values of parents (GPs or gametophytes) as a short cut around extensive and expensive field testing (Figure 1). A separate ARPA-E project will test the potential labor-saving use of WHOI's robotic autonomous underwater vehicles and sensors for conducting phenotypic measurements of family test plots. These will be compared to conventional hands-on field measurements.

Ultimately our project goal is to select sugar kelp best suited genetically to offshore farm environments and possessing qualities of increased dry matter yield per unit area (up to 10% per generation) and improved composition for use as a bioenergy feedstock.