Building a Gametophyte Seed Bank

The goal of this course is to provide instruction in how to grow kelp seed without depending on wild sorus as precursor material. The course will walk you through the process of culturing gametophytes for large scale seed production, from setting up your gametophyte nursery to painting gametophytes onto spools and rearing those spools until the time of outplant. Seeding spools with gametophytes offers more control over the timing of seed production and ability to better manage contamination in seed tanks. It can also help to alleviate pressure on wild populations from the strain that collecting wild sorus for spore seeding puts on them.