History

Historical considerations

Traditionally, seaweeds were used in the cold sea coastal areas to fertilize agricultural croplands due to the lack of organic fertilizers and the non-existence of mineral fertilizers.

The use of non refined seaweed is an important source for obtaining extracts and derivates directly used as fertilizers or as a base to apply other substances, “Ascophyllum nodsum” being the most used and better studied seaweed.

More recent researches have evidenced that jointly with production increases, the following may be also observed:

• soil improvement
• cease of acidification
• pH stabilization
• cation exchange increases
• fewer salinization problems (López-Mosquera & Pazos 1997)

The North Atlantic is an ideal habitat forAscophyllum nodosum’s development, a brown seaweed, due to its cold waters, great tide rises and abundant nutrients during most of the year, in part, due to the Gulf Current.

The first seaweed product was created in Great Britain in 1949. Thereafter, seaweed products have continued developing and their application fields expanded.

The existing bibliography describes:

• pathogen resistance development (Kulok 1995; Yvin 1994)
• growth stimulation (Vasakova Hradecka & Jankovsky 1995; Yvin 1994; Malec 1995)
• an increase in enzyme activity of plants treated with seaweed      extracts
• lack of micronutrient compensation symptoms (Jolivet, Langlais, Morot & De-Langlais 1991).
• growth regulation by means of application of seaweed extracts to plants as a growth regulator, or rather, as an endogenous growth regulator comparable with the effect of phytohormones.