📋 Tender Overview
Iculture: A Digital Bio-Platform And Co-Culture Bioprocess To Prospect And Utilize Macroalgae Responsibly And Sustainably.
Digital Platform For Sustainable Use And Research Of Seaweed Biomasseurope Boasts Over 100 Megatons Of Seaweed, Its Largest Biomass. Surprisingly, Only 0.25 % Of This Resource Is Utilised, Primarily As Low-Cost Fertiliser. Current Methods Struggle To Harness The Potential Of Thousands Of Identified Macroalgae. Nevertheless, The Data Collected On Them Is Crucial For The Sustainable Utilisation Of This Resource. The Eu-Funded Iculture Project Aims To Establish A Cross-Disciplinary Consortium Of European Experts In Ict, Biodiversity, And Related Fields To Create A Digital Platform And Toolsets For The Sustainable Utilisation Of Seaweed Biomass. These Toolsets Will Facilitate The Discovery Of New Species, Research On Them, And Provide Specialised Ai Algorithms For The Curation Of Over 80Tb Of Currently Available Data.
Funded Under
Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture And Environment
Total Cost
€ 5 999 686,25
Eu Contribution
€ 5 999 686,25
Coordinated By
Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet Ntnu
Norway
Objective
Over 100 Megatons of seaweed constitute Europe's largest biomass, but less than 0.25% is utilized. Marine industry stakeholders are currently left with 50-70% of residual side-streams sold as low-cost fertilizers. Existing data on more than 10000 macroalgae species could help this industry to improve their processes but the data is too large and manual curation is not feasible. Despite the progression of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and digital instruments, these techniques have barely entered the biobased sector.
iCulture is a cross-disciplinary consortium where European expertise on ICT, bioinformatic, biodiversity, biotechnology, synthetic biology and bioprocessing is combined to develop a set of digital toolboxes that can prospect for new species of seaweed, utilize these in microbial fermentation, and understand how to use it responsibly and sustainably.
Over 80 TB of existing seaweed data and 700.000 genes will be mined by machine learning algorithms in an A.I. toolbox to identify macroalgae characteristics: growth, response to environmental conditions, chemical composition and more. These will be used by a predictive Model toolbox, with models for compositional changes, recovery, resilience and Dispersion, to deliver key features that are important for responsible resource management. A Bioprocess technology toolbox will use this information for a machine learning controlled microbial co-culture, that will convert complex sugar mixtures to catalysts producing high-value antimicrobials.
The multiple benefits of this digital platform are 1) boost the prospecting efficiency of new species by using powerful A.I. algorithms 2) help to understand the potential and vulnerability of resources, so that a responsible management strategy can guide the operations of stakeholders,
