How sustainable restoration waste is becoming a high‑value resource for functional foods, biotechnology, and blue‑economy innovation.

The oceans hold extraordinary potential for the future of food. Yet, unlocking this potential sustainably — while protecting fragile ecosystems — remains one of Europe’s greatest challenges. Within this context, the NOVAFOODIES project, funded under Horizon Europe, is pioneering new ways to transform responsibly sourced aquatic resources into high‑value ingredients for the food and biotechnology sectors.

One of the most exciting advances emerging from the project involves a Mediterranean brown seaweed: Ericaria amentacea, a habitat‑forming species that has suffered a sharp decline in recent decades due to pollution, coastal development, and climate‑driven stressors.

While efforts are underway to restore natural populations of this essential marine forest builder, NOVAFOODIES researchers discovered an opportunity hidden within the restoration process itself — and it has the potential to reshape the way we think about sustainable biomaterials. Restoring Ericaria amentacea requires culturing algal apices (the growing tips) to stimulate gamete release and encourage new plant development. Traditionally, after this process, the remaining biological material was simply discarded.

But NOVAFOODIES researchers saw something different: a unique, underexplored biomass rich in polysaccharides, particularly sodium alginate, a natural polymer widely used in food technology, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical materials.

To explore the complete research,

please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/24/1/41

or download the PDF: https://novafoodies.eu/media-kit/

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