FunSea

Description

One of our most pressing societal challenges today is feeding the growing world population in a sustainable manner. The present global food system causes major environmental problems, including land degradation, loss of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, water usage and pollution. There is thus a great need for novel food resources that are healthy, safe, and nutritious, and at the same time cause less emission of greenhouse gases, pollutants, and excess nutrients, and do not further compromise the sustainability and biodiversity of natural resources. Cultivated macroalgae are a staple of the Asian diets and can have a bigger contribution to more sustainable food systems, but still faces challenges in penetrating western markets due to an inherently low nutritional content, low versatility and inclusion rates in foods because of sensory properties, lacking innovation in product development, and knowledge gaps regarding safety and health benefits.  
The FunSea project aims to enhance nutritional quality, safety and functional properties of cultivated brown and green algae as food ingredients, through development of new sustainable processing technologies and utilization of side streams and residual biomass from seaweed production as well as other aquaculture industries and fisheries. The project will further develop and characterize novel food prototypes toward a wide European market, and assess environmental, economic, and regulatory aspects along the value chain from biomass production to finished products. The consortium consists of four research partners (SINTEF, Lund University, Aalborg University, Fraunhofer IMTE), one public body (Marine centre Simrishams municipality) and two industry partners (Seaweed Solutions, Bettafish) representing four countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany) and will utilize marine resources from the Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea. Key technologies in the project include biomass cultivation and pre-processing, enzymatic and microbial processing, food technology, and environmental analysis. The FunSea project will develop new knowledge, methodology and prototypes based on renewable and sustainable marine biomasses, contributing to the growth of the blue economy, development of scientific excellence, and solutions toward key societal challenges.