Cultivation of the oceans is a key requirement for future sustainable and efficient utilisation of the ocean resources required to meet demands for food, feed, materials, and energy for a growing global population. Norway, with one of the world's longest coastlines, and great expectations being linked to the emergence of seaweed cultivation as a new bioeconomy, can take a leading role. The Norwegian Test Center for Seaweed Cultivation and Utilization Technologies – RI SEAWEED/The Norwegian Seaweed Centre (https://norwegianseaweedcentre.com/) will address this by creating a world-leading research infrastructure for seaweed science and technology. The Norwegian Seaweed Centre will contribute to advance seaweed research by providing a holistic value-chain approach offering a unique, integrated, full-scale technology platform and interdisciplinary knowledge hubs at SINTEF and NTNU in close collaboration with industry. The infrastructure will consist of land farms and coastal- and offshore sea farms for seaweed cultivation and an integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) site for salmon and seaweed. The sea farms and surrounding sea areas will be visualized with ocean models coupled to a sensor network for surveillance of environmental variables, uptake of nutrients and CO2 and growth of seaweed at the farms. A laboratory for robotics and automation of land and sea farms and a mobile container with equipment for pre-processing, stabilization and storage of harvested seaweed will be built, and equipment for processing and advanced analytical tools for product development and quality testing will be installed.The Norwegian Seaweed Centre will be in line with national and European strategies for marine research and the ambitions of the High-level panel for ocean economy, which identifies seaweed cultivation as an opportunity for a new blue bioeconomy and movement towards a low-emissions society. Accordingly, The Norwegian Seaweed Centre will contribute to meet several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the targets set by the Paris Agreement.
