MANDAPAM, India - Adjusting their swimming goggles and wrapping their fingers in cloth to protect them from the jagged coral below, a group of women plunge into choppy waters off southern India to gather seaweed - their routine since childhood.
As global interest in seaweed farming grows, India has outlined ambitious plans to drastically ramp up and modernise its small-scale production of the underwater plant, hailed for its climate-friendly credentials and nutritional value. In contrast to other crops, it can be grown without taking up more land or fresh water as climate change impacts - including harsher heat, drought and floods - pose a major emerging threat to global food security.
A woman harvesting wild seaweed in the waters off the coast of Rameswaram in India’s Tamil Nadu state. PHOTO: AFPAside from sushi and salads, seaweed extracts - agar, alginate and carrageenan - are used as thickening and gelling agents, and are in high demand from a number of industries including food processing, biostimulants, cosmetics, and even making alternative plastics for packaging.
In a report last month, the World Bank said 10 emerging global seaweed markets - from animal feed to yield-boosting biostimulants - have potential growth of up to $11.8 billion by 2030, in part because of the plant’s capacity to store planet-heating carbon and boost marine biodiversity. The waters around Dr Veeragurunathan’s office in Mandapam are the richest in the country for seaweed diversity, home to about a quarter of the 844 native varieties that grow in Indian waters. Building rafts from bamboo and string, a group of student scientists stood in mucky waist-deep water in the Palk Strait off Tamil Nadu one recent morning to run tests on different seaweed strains.
In the mid-2000s, beverage manufacturer PepsiCo attempted to cultivate an imported strain of seaweed from the Philippines near Mandapam, referred to by local women as “Pepsi pasi” - pasi means seaweed in the Tamil language. The Philippines government, through its National Seaweed Technology Development Centre , is leading efforts to culture old seaweed varieties in laboratories, in a bid to come up with more disease-resistant kinds.
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