My Seaweed Looks Weird: a Community Web Portal to Accelerate Pathogen Discovery in Seaweeds

Worldwide, novel species of pathogens are frequently reported in cultivated and wild macroalgae. Alongside the rapid growth of the seaweed industry, diseases and pests have become an area of significant concern for cultivation and conservation of wild stocks alike: yield and quality of a crop might be greatly affected and sometimes, the losses due to diseases and pests are such that they jeopardize the economic viability of cultivation. Disease management methods and biosecurity are still in their infancy, especially as disease-causing organisms are most often poorly known, with limited options for robust and rapid diagnostics. Here, we describe a community-based, multilingual initiative that aims to foster the description of disease-causing organisms relevant to the seaweed industry worldwide and to underpin the conservation of wild seaweed genetic resources.