Speaker

About the speaker: 

Arne Duinker works with seafood with focus on the content of contaminants and nutrients. The recent years he has worked with providing data on a wide variety of seaweed species as well as projects with the industry on processing of farmed kelp for food purposes, including iodine reduction and fermentation. 

Company info:

The Institute of Marine Research (IMR) is one of the biggest marine research institutes in Europe, with offices and research stations at several locations around Norway. Their main activities are research, advisory work and monitoring. Their Research Vessel Department has ownership responsibility for the research vessels, which are the most important tools for collecting marine data. The IMR also has several laboratories that analyse the samples taken by its monitoring and research programmes.

Through its research and advice, the IMR seeks to help society to continue exploiting the valuable assets in the sea sustainably. They are a neutral knowledge provider, and we publicise their research results both in Norway and internationally.

Presentation: 

This presentation presents results from a project established in close collaboration between kelp producers, the food industry and relevant research experts, as a basis to develop post-harvest methods for the sustainable production of safe, nutritious and flavourful ingredients from kelps (Saccharina latissima and Alaria esculenta) to the food industry.  Techniques for iodine reduction that maximises retention of taste and nutrients has been demonstrated at industry scale, and it has been demonstrated that kelp can give flavour to food products without exceeding the desired levels of iodine. This use can be further developed with focus on providing both flavour, consistence and salt replacement to food products, avoiding ultra processing several ingredients. The potential of kelp ingredients with low degree of processing for health benefits should be subject for further studies.