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International audience; In comparison to the extensive seaweed farms of Asia, seaweed aquaculture in Europe is very small scale. The main activity of the European seaweed industry involves harvesting and exploiting natural populations mainly for the colloid and plant biostimulants industry. Developing concern about environmental impacts due to harvesting pressure on wild populations has encouraged seaweed farming projects throughout European waters. Expansion of industries based on macroalgae can only be practicably achieved through algal farming. From a biological point of view, the potential impact on seaweed genetic diversity has triggered concern for sustainable practices. Preserving natural genetic diversity is a pre-requisite for developing efficient resource production through farming. Compared to cultivars selected for land agriculture (maize, wheat…), strain selection for seaweed farming is at a very early age and an inevitable leap in knowledge is expected. EU countries are facing common technological challenges, environmental concerns as well as financial and legal barriers. For further optimisation of seaweed mariculture systems, more focus is required on the production of species for high-value markets and of better adapted varieties selected from local populations. As marine environments are less controllable and are more variable than land-based systems, breeding should aim at improved strains adapted to the local environment as well as preventing the introgression of unsuitable genes in natural populations. This talk will discuss some important questions that arise with respect to our efficiency in selecting the most important traits for the brown algal kelp Saccharina latissima, such as yield stability, and on the compounds and substances to produce and apply them in a the context of the preservation of natural populations.. Perspectives for a global regulation for seaweed breeding and seed production in EU will be given that could also be implemented in other regions of the world.

Brown algae are important organisms both because of their key ecological roles in coastal ecosystems and because of the remarkable biological features that they have acquired during their unusual evolutionary history. The recent sequencing of the complete genome of the filamentous brown alga Ectocarpus has provided unprecedented access to the molecular processes that underlie brown algal biology. Analysis of the genome sequence, which exhibits several unusual structural features, identified genes that are predicted to play key roles in several aspects of brown algal metabolism, in the construction of the multicellular bodyplan and in resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Information from the genome sequence is currently being used in combination with other genomic, genetic and biochemical tools to further investigate these and other aspects of brown algal biology at the molecular level. Here, we review some of the major discoveries that emerged from the analysis of the Ectocarpus genome sequence, with a particular focus on the unusual genome structure, inferences about brown algal evolution and novel aspects of brown algal metabolism.