A preliminary evaluation of the red seaweed Gracilariopsis silvana, isolated from Colon, Panama, as a potential new agar-producing cultivar

• Published in: Journal of applied phycology Vol. 33; no. 6; pp. 4125 - 4136
• Main Authors: Zhang, Mengjie, Li, Hu, Xue, Junrui, Pang, Tong, de Vega, Gloria Batista, Xia, Bangmei, Liu, Jianguo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agar; Algae; Benthos; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biotechnology; Chlorophyll; Chlorophylls; Colon; Cultivars; Cultivation; Ecology; Economics; Environmental conditions; Evaluation; Fluorescence; Food processing; Food processing industry; Freshwater & Marine Ecology; Gracilariopsis; Irradiance; Life Sciences; Light water; Nucleotide sequence; Photons; Photosystem II; Plant Physiology; Plant Sciences; Seaweeds; Species; Temperature gradients; Tropical climate; Water temperature; Panama; Rhodophyta; Temperature; Irradiance; Morphology; Salinity
• ISSN: 0921-8971; 1573-5176
• DOI: 10.1007/s10811-021-02598-7

Gracilariopsis , a genus of agar-producing red seaweeds with high economic value, plays an important role in food manufacturing, pharmaceutical processing, and modern biotechnology. In this study, a wild species of red seaweed from Panama was identified as Gracilariopsis silvana by anatomy and DNA sequence data. With an aim to evaluate the response of this species to environmental conditions, changes of its PSII behaviors when exposed to gradient temperatures, salinities, and irradiances were assessed using the chlorophyll (Chl) a fluorescence transient. The PSII behaviors of this seaweed had no significant variation when the water temperature ranged from 21 to 33 °C, salinity from 12 to 40‰, and irradiance from 4 to 160 μmol photons m −2  s −1 . These observations suggest that this red seaweed is able to adapt to a wide range of temperatures and salinities and has a useful characteristic of adaptation to low irradiance. Based on these results, this Gracilariopsis species is proposed as a potentially excellent red seaweed for cultivation, with great potential for benthic seaweed cultivation in low-light water layers in tropical and temperate regions.