Ascophyllum
Ascophyllum nodosumalso known as Goémon noir, algue noueuse, robert, favach (in Breton), or Ascophylle noueuse in French in Quebec, is a species of seaweed of the class Phaeophyceae.
Description
This brown " knotted rope " seaweed can grow to over 1.50 m in length. It is common along the rocky coasts of the North Atlantic, where it forms dense colonies in the tidal range.
Ascophyllum nodosum is harvested as fertiliser, as a feed resource for livestock or as a raw material for the extraction of alginates.
Traditionally, fields are fertilised simply by spreading dried seaweed, which may be mixed with manure. It is cut in the spring(April-May) and spread in the autumn after the harvest. The interest as a fertiliser is linked to the high content of macro-elements (such as N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S) and trace elements (for example Mn, Cu, Fe, Zn, etc.). There are also phytohormones (growth stimulators), mannitol, organic acids, polysaccharides, amino acids and proteins, all of which are beneficial to agriculture.
Its use as cattle feed is clearly ancient. The names used in Norway, where the species is abundant, attest to this: grisetang (from grise, pig, and tang, for Fucus seaweed) or hesttang (from hest, horse). Although direct human consumption is rare, it is reported by some Inuit in Greenland as a dietary supplement.
However, it is the use as a source of alginates that is predominant today. Over 80,000 wet tonnes were harvested in Europe between 1995 and 1996, and an average of 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes was harvested in Canada between 1970 and 1980.()
