Undaria pinnatifida brown algae phylum, brown subclass, kelp order, winged algae family, wakame genus. Plants belonging to the seaweed, leaf green pinnate lobes, leaf blade is thinner than the kelp, the shape of a large broken sunflower fan, but also like the kelp, so take its name. Wakame in China during the Song Dynasty "Materia Medica" on the vegetable plantago, sound into wakame. There are two kinds of wakame: light dried and salted dried. Wakame is brown algae plant kelp family of seaweed, known as the sea vegetables.

In addition to natural reproduction, artificial breeding has begun. The wakame that grows naturally in Lushun is of the best quality due to its favorable geographic location, and the nutrition of selected wakame is comparable to that of spirulina, which is called "natural spirulina" in Japan.

Morphological Characteristics

Undaria pinnatifida is also known as "sea mustard" and "wakame". Undaria pinnatifida is also known as "sea mustard" and "wakame". It is a member of the family of brown algae. Algae

Brownish green, leaf height 1-2m, width 50-100cm, divided into blade, stalk, fixation. The leaf resembles a plantain, with a conspicuous midrib and a pinnately divided margin. The stalk is flat and cylindrical, and at maturity the margins of the stalk form many fungus-like overlapping and folded sporophytes, bearing sporangia. With mucous glands. Pseudoroots forked and branched. There is a distinct unequal alternation of generations. Born in warm oceans. Distributed along the north coast of China and in Zhejiang Shengsi. It has been cultivated on a large scale along the north coast. It is used for food and as an industrial raw material. [1]?

Wakame

The sporophyte of wakame

is yellowish-brown in color, resembling a broken banana leaf fan, 1-2 m high, 50-100 mm wide, and clearly differentiated into three parts: the fixture, the stalk, and the leaf blade. The fixator is composed of forked branched pseudoroots, the end of which is slightly thicker to fixate on the rocky reef, the stalk is slightly longer, flattened and rounded, with a slightly elevated center, and the middle part of the leaf blade has a midrib from which the stalk is elongated, with pinnately shaped lobes formed on both sides. The leaf surface is covered with numerous small black spots, which are openings for the mucous gland cells toward the surface.? [2]?

The internal structure is very similar to that of kelp, in that on either side of the stalk of the growing sporangium, fungus-like overlapping folded sporangia are formed, and at maturity, sporangia are formed on the sporangia. The life history of wakame is very similar to that of kelp, also alternating generations, but the sporophyte growth is shorter than that of kelp, close to one year (kelp grows for close to two years), while the gametophyte growth is longer than that of kelp, about one month (kelp gametophyte growth is usually only two weeks).? [2]?

Geographic distribution

China's Dalian in Liaoning, Shandong Qingdao, Yantai, Weihai and other places as the main producing areas, Zhejiang Zhoushan Islands also produced.

Growth habit

Wakame is often called "vegetable of the sea" in some countries in Europe and America. Indeed, the seaweed floating in the sea does remind people of land

vegetables. Like land plants, wakame forms its own skeleton of carbohydrates through photosynthesis (cellulose in land plants, polysaccharides such as fucoidan and phycocyanin in wakame), and produces proteins directly through nitrogen assimilation, which is exactly the same as vegetables. However, a closer look at its life history throughout its life reveals that wakame is actually quite different from land plants.? [2]?

The two parts of wakame are the lobed leaf and the midrib (stem) that runs through the center of the lobed leaf. The lobed leaf, also called the blade, is located on either side of the midrib and is the main part we usually eat; the midrib, also called the wakame stalk, is located in the center of the leaf acting as a support for the blade and is also used for eating. Further down is the growth zone where the growing point of the wakame leaf is located, which is equivalent to the lower part of the stem of a land plant, and will produce the reproductive organs of wakame - sporophytes (commonly known as "ears") during the breeding season of wakame, while at the very bottom are the roots (pseudoroots) at the bottom.



[1]?

If we look at them from the outside, we would probably think that they are not very different from land plants, but in fact the biggest difference is in their function. The main function of the roots of land plants is to support and fix themselves while also absorbing nutrients from the soil, whereas the main function of the roots of wakame is to attach themselves to objects such as rocks and play only a role in fixing the algae. So where do nutrients get absorbed from? It is mainly done by the leaf part, which is the split leaf part.

Undaria pinnatifida mainly relies on the leaves to absorb nitrogen, calcium and phosphate from seawater and other nutrients necessary for growth, and then synthesize and utilize the transformation in the body. In addition, in terms of the type of cellulose synthesized by photosynthesis, it is different from the cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin of land plants, etc. The main products synthesized by photosynthesis of wakame are polysaccharides such as fucoidan and phylloglucan, which have good therapeutic effects in lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, and preventing adult diseases. Another major characteristic of Undaria pinnatifida is that it reproduces in a completely different way from land plants. For example, land higher plants physically produce offspring by mutual pollination of male and female stamens after flowering. But wakame cannot flower, and instead relies on swimming spores to produce offspring.? [1]?

Cultivation technology

Seedling method

There are two ways to cultivate artificial seedling of wakame, one is low-temperature seedling, and the other is room temperature seedling. Low-temperature nursery is the use of low-temperature cultivation of kelp seedlings to cultivate wakame seedlings, the implementation of the sporophyte ferry degree, this method of equipment investment, high cost, complex operation, generally no longer used. And room temperature nursery is simple and easy to implement. Only nursery room, seawater sedimentation tank, filtration tanks, attachments, etc. can be carried out at room temperature.

Seedling curtain seedling curtain is the nursery, usually woven with red brown rope or Vinylon rope. The specifications of red brown rope quality requirements, processing methods, seedling curtain weaving method are basically the same as the kelp summer seedling curtain. Vinylon seedling curtain, but also coated with epoxy resin hard curtain and not coated with epoxy resin soft curtain two kinds, to hard curtain seedling effect is good. Soft curtain and hard curtain with a diameter of 3 ~ 5 mm white Vinylon rope woven. Each curtain is 50 ropes, net length of 62 meters (presented here is a specification of the seedling curtain, in fact, should be based on the length and width of the nursery pool). Seedling curtain woven, temporarily taut in the wooden frame, first evenly coated with a layer of epoxy resin (to non-toxic "191" is good), to be completely dry after the hardboard, and then removed from the wooden frame to prevent the hard curtain of the distortion of the uneven. Before use, it can be soaked in filtered seawater for 1 day.

Nursery ponds and sedimentation ponds Nursery ponds are better with cement ponds. The water capacity of each pool should not be less than 20 cubic meters, and the water depth is 1.3 to 2 meters. Sedimentation tanks should be able to carry out dark precipitation, and their capacity should be at least equal to the total amount of water in the nursery tank.

Selection of seedling treatment and spore collection The breeding period of wakame raised on floating rafts extends to mid-July, and that of wakame grown on the seabed extends to early August. Artificial seedlings are better to pick spores appropriately late in mid or late July. Before collecting spores, according to 1 seedling curtain to prepare 1 spore leaf dosage, the spore leaf fat

large, dark brown color, no large number of spores dispersed over the wakame selection of seedling, and then excise the pseudoroots and leaves, leaving only the spore leaf, the first natural seawater scrubbing 2 to 3 times, wash off the silt and attached organisms. Then rinse with filtered seawater for 1 time, and then it can be shade-dried to stimulate the collection of spores. When the number of spores reaches about 20 in each low-power (100x) field of view, the stimulation can be stopped and the spores can be dispersed and attached. Yin dry stimulate good spore leaves, to be put into the water temperature of 23 ℃ below the seawater, to promote spore dispersal, if more than 23 ℃, should be added cooling seawater or add ice packs to cool down. Generally, after 0.5~1 hour of dispersal, about 50 free spores per low magnification field of view can be reached. At this point, spore water can be filtered through gauze into a pool that has been lined with seedling curtains for spore attachment. Attachment device with red brown rope seedling curtains, each pool laid 6 to 8 layers, Vinylon seedling curtains laid 8 to 10 layers. In seawater below 23℃, the swimming time of swimming spores is generally not more than 1 hour to attach, and the amount of spore attachment can be checked after 2 hours. When the amount of attachment reaches more than 100 per low-power field of view, the spore water can be drained and fresh seawater can be injected to end the spore harvesting work. In order to resist the harm of the attachment of miscellaneous algae, the spore attachment amount can also reach about 200 per low-magnification field of view.

Sprouts are cultivated for 10 to 15 days after spore collection. The conditions are light intensity of 1500 to 2000 lux, fertilization starts on the 3rd day after attachment, the amount of nitrogen fertilizer is 2 ppm, phosphorus fertilizer is 0.2 ppm, and the nursery water should be filtered seawater that has been dark and precipitated for more than 7 days. Under the condition of room temperature, change the water once every 3 days, 1/3 each time.

The cultivation conditions for the gametophyte high temperature summer stage require that the light intensity is about 500 lux. Water temperature should not exceed 29 ℃, otherwise cooling measures should be taken. The daily temperature difference should not exceed 1℃. The amount of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer are the same as the previous stage. 10 ~ 15 days to change the water once, each time to change 1/3 ~ 1/2. Before and after the change of water temperature difference should not exceed 0.5 ℃. It is better to keep the pH value at 8.0～8.3. The stage of sexual maturity of gametophyte and cultivation of young sporophyte, that is, from the time when the natural water temperature drops to 23℃ and doesn't go back up again until the stage before leaving the pool to go to the sea.

Salting

The processing of wakame has changed dramatically, and the development of salting wakame in 1965, which made it possible to preserve wakame under fresh conditions, is of great importance in the history of wakame processing. The use of a large amount of salt greatly increased the preservation value of wakame while removing its moisture. 5 years later, the boiling salted wakame processing method was invented in which the fresh algae were boiled and then salted, which increased the preservation value while making the color of wakame more vivid.

However, with the development of society, the trend of life in today's world tends to be simpler and faster, and the boiling salted wakame is still inconvenient to consume, such as the need to be washed before eating, chopping and other processes, which is a waste of time. In this case, boiling-dried wakame developed in 1975 is very convenient. The processing method is to boil the harvested fresh wakame, remove the stems and midribs, wash it after refrigeration, cut it into small pieces with a side length of 5 cm and 6 cm, and then dry it into a finished product using hot air. When boiling and drying wakame into vegetable soup or miso soup, the small pieces of wakame recover immediately, saving time such as soaking in salt, and making wakame easy to eat. The fact that Boiled and Dried Wakame is cut into bite-sized pieces makes it easier for modern people to use a knife. Consumption of boiled and dried wakame will increase dramatically as the quality and management of wakame continue to improve. With the extensive use of boil-dried wakame in fast food, there are concerns about whether there will be differences in flavor and nutrition from fresh wakame. Experiments have shown that boiling and drying wakame into water will immediately absorb water and swell back to its original form, and it is almost the same as fresh wakame in terms of nutrition and flavor, so people consuming fast food products do not have to worry about it.

Previously, salted wakame was generally not easy to store for a long time, but another advantage of boiling dried wakame is that it can be stored for up to one year, because boiling dried wakame has a very low water content and can be stored for a long time. Boil-dried wakame may not give you a good impression as it looks like crumpled black bits on the surface, but its composition is almost the same as that of fresh wakame. If you think it is too much trouble to eat wakame, please consume boil-dried wakame, you will feel very simple and convenient.

But the cultivation of wakame must be developed in order to provide mankind with large quantities of sufficient wakame. We know that a lot of wakame grows naturally along the coast of our country, and relying on the harvesting of these wild wakame is far from enough to satisfy the market demand. In 1954, Mr. Yojiro Ogushi developed wakame cultivation technology and started large-scale cultivation production, laying a solid foundation for supplying the market with sufficient wakame products. About 90% of the wakame consumed in the market comes from cultivation. Cultivation of wakame requires a large number of seedlings, and the cultivation of seedlings has been industrialized by attaching the spores of wakame to seedling ropes and then cultivating them in the sea, and then winding the seedling ropes around large ropes set up in the sea to cultivate them after the seedlings appear. When we talk about farming or cultivation, we think of baiting and other culture management as in the case of silver salmon, carp, and ayu fish farming. Cultivation of wakame only requires manual spore harvesting, and like naturally grown wakame, cultivated wakame grows mainly by absorbing nutrient salts from seawater, and is cultivated as an adult under natural conditions, and therefore contains exactly the same components as naturally grown wakame. With the improvement of cultivation technology and processing technology, wakame will become more and more relevant to our daily lives.

Main value

While wakame has high economic and medicinal value, it is not only rich in proteins, vitamins and minerals, but also contains fucoidan, mannitol, fucoidan, highly unsaturated fatty acids, fucoidan, organic iodine, sterol compounds, dietary fiber and many other active ingredients with unique physiological functions? [2]? It has a variety of physiological activities such as hypolipidemic, hypotensive, immunomodulatory, anti-mutagenic, anti-tumor, etc.? [2]? It has a variety of pharmacological effects, and has good efficacy in antiviral, anti-tumor, blood pressure, weight loss, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. [2]?

Nutritional composition

Undaria pinnatifida contains a variety of nutrients, according to the preliminary analysis of each hundred grams of dried products containing 11.6g of crude protein, 0.32g of refined fat content, 37.81g of sugars, 18.93g of ash, but also contains a variety of vitamins, the crude protein content is higher than seaweed, the flavor of which is more than kelp. Wakame is not only a kind of edible economic brown algae, but also can be used as a comprehensive utilization of raw materials for extraction of fucoidan.

At the same time is known as smart food, beauty dishes, health dishes, green sea cucumber wakame, is a natural treasure trove of trace elements and minerals, containing more than a dozen kinds of essential amino acids, calcium, iodine, zinc, selenium, folic acid and vitamins A, B, C and other minerals. The calcium content of wakame is 10 times that of milk, the king of calcium, and the zinc content is 3 times that of beef, the best zinc supplement. 500 grams of wakame contains iron equal to 21 pounds of spinach, vitamin C equal to 1.5 pounds of carrots, and protein equal to 1.5 sea cucumbers. The amount of protein is equal to 1.5 sea cucumbers. Its iodine content is also more than kelp, plus rich in amino acids, crude fiber and other trace elements, children's bones, intellectual development is extremely beneficial. Wakame also features high nutrition and low calories, making it easy to achieve weight loss, clean the intestines, protect the skin, and slow down the aging process, making it a favorite dish for many women. One of the main reasons why Japan is recognized as a longevity country is that wakame is on the table every day. Wakame has become Japan, South Korea, children and students nutritional diet of essential dishes.

Japan has a long history of wakame cultivation and is a major consumer of wakame, and is a world leader in wakame nutrition and its relationship to human health. Mr. Kazutoshi Nishizawa, a famous Japanese expert in algal biochemistry, has been engaged in research on the nutrition, pharmacology and relationship with human health of seaweeds for many years, and his book, "Undaria pinnatifida, King of Seaweeds", explains through a large number of survey results and

Undaria pinnatifida (6 pictures)

experimental data that the

The book explains the nutritional value and medicinal value of wakame, especially in the prevention and treatment of high blood pressure, adult diseases and other aspects of the special effects of the scientific discussion, and lists the scientific wakame consumption methods, is a collection of wakame basic knowledge, nutritional value, medicinal effects and its mechanism of the introduction of the book as one of the good.

The Japanese have been consuming seaweed since B.C., which is amply confirmed by the excavation of shell mound remains. In addition, Wakame Shrine in Kitakyushu City and Sumiyoshi Shrine in Shimonoseki City, across the river from Kitakyushu City, still maintain the tradition that in the early morning of Spring Festival every year, the presiding officer of the shrine steps into the sea to hold a ceremony for harvesting wakame and enshrines the harvested wakame in front of the shrine to announce the beginning of the wakame harvesting season.

Contains minerals

Wakame is rich in minerals that are essential to human health

Though there are some differences between humans and animals, their energy to survive depends on the three main nutrients they consume from food: sugar, fat and protein. But is it true that these three nutrients alone are sufficient for human survival? In fact, animals cannot survive if they rely solely on these three nutrients. The reason is that in the body for the use of nutrients to carry out the process of life-sustaining activities, need to carry out a variety of chemical reactions, in order to make this chemical reaction can be carried out effectively, but also need a very small amount of special substances, that is, the participation of micronutrients, and these micronutrients mainly include vitamins and minerals.

As far as vitamins are concerned, since their discovery in 1912, their research utilization has made rapid progress in the first half of the 20th century. Symptoms of vitamin deficiencies and their mechanism of action in the body are well understood. However, in the study of minerals, even though they were discovered earlier than vitamins, there has not been much progress in their research because they have not attracted much attention for a long time. In our daily life, what we know is only the relationship between iron and greed, iodine and thyroid dysfunction, calcium and bones and teeth and other knowledge, as for the role of various minerals, the specific human body in the end what minerals are needed, the number of a day how much is not very well understood. Through research, it has been found that there is a big difference between the mineral content in normal children and children with congenital anomalies, and it has also been found that a certain mineral can prevent arteriosclerosis, and the lack of which can lead to an increase in the incidence of breast cancer, which has made people pay attention to the importance of minerals. In other words, minerals form the skeleton of human life, and mineral deficiencies are an important cause of abnormalities and diseases in the human body. Under these circumstances, the United States, where research on mineral nutritional elements is much ahead of Japan, took the lead in proposing the concept of the human body's encouraged daily intake (RDA) of minerals. Americans are very much ahead of their time in their awareness that the occurrence of diseases is closely related to daily dietary life, and they also have a high level of research on cancer prevention foods and vitamins. Therefore, as one of the important aspects of the above research, just as the study of how much vitamin intake is actually needed in a day, a specific number has been proposed for minerals, which is the encouraged intake (RDA).

But in reality, micronutrient intake still shows a tendency to decrease, and anemia is a good example. According to the survey results, one out of every three women shows a tendency to anemia, most of which is iron-deficiency anemia, and insufficient intake of iron is the main cause of the disease. Eating less than the normal diet due to improved living standards, changes in the chemical composition of the food itself due to greenhouse cultivation, and the consumption of large quantities of processed products, such as convenience foods, are important reasons for the inadequate intake of minerals by modern people.

What kind of food should be consumed in daily life to ensure adequate intake of minerals? The first recommendation should be seaweed such as wakame. Seaweeds are often compared to "sea vegetables," and the biggest difference between them and plants on land is that their bodies absorb a lot of nutrients from seawater, and the ocean is the richest treasure trove of minerals. Therefore, wakame, which is rich in mineral nutrients, is the most ideal source of mineral supplementation for modern people.

Anti-cancer effect

When it comes to the anti-cancer effect of wakame, I would like to emphasize the anti-cancer effect of vitamin A. We have known for a long time that if you are deficient in vitamin A, you are prone to night blindness. For example, when we first enter a movie theater, initially because of the darkness can not see anything, but after a while, the eyes will gradually adapt to be able to find a seat, which in physiology is called light and dark compliance. Vitamin A is indispensable for this kind of light/dark adaptation. Vitamin A has been emphasized as a vitamin with anti-cancer properties. Until now, we only knew that vitamin A is indispensable for the normal division and maturation of skin and mucous membrane cells. If you are deficient in vitamin A, your skin will become as rough and ugly as shark skin. This is due to the abnormal phenomenon that occurs when the cells divided in the stroma layer of the skin gradually mature and age, and are transformed into the stratum corneum that covers the skin surface (also called keratinization of the skin). Experiments have shown that vitamin A not only maintains the normal division of cells, but also has the function of transforming the pre-cancerous state of cells into a normal state, which has attracted a great deal of attention. However, it is regrettable that the human body and can not be utilized in large quantities of vitamin A, because vitamin A belongs to the fat-soluble vitamins, only soluble in fats and oils, insoluble in water, and therefore can not be like other water-soluble vitamins that can be excreted with the urine, but the accumulation of the human body. If ingested in large quantities every day, it is easy to suffer from cerebral hyperpressurization, showing headaches, nausea, vomiting and other after-effects. In order to effectively utilize the benefits of vitamin A and to reduce its side effects, research on improved forms of vitamin A is being conducted in a variety of ways, but has not yet been successful. Therefore, in order to effectively utilize the anticancer effects of vitamin A, the best way at present is to make up for its deficiencies by using food, such as consuming an appropriate amount of animal liver, eel and other vitamin A-rich foods. However, such animal foods are more difficult to eat, and daily consumption of large quantities does not completely exclude the possibility of suffering from vitamin A sequelae. One of the best methods available is to get plenty of carotenoids from vegetables on a daily basis. Carotene is also known as a factory for the production of vitamin A. Once in the body, carotene is immediately broken down and 1/3 of it is converted to vitamin A. Although the conversion rate of vitamin A may be slightly lower, there is no need to worry about the after-effects of excessive intake of vitamin A. In addition, some experts have reported the possibility of postvitaminosis A syndrome in animal foods, as well as in animal products. In addition, some experts have reported that carotenoids not only break down to form vitamin A to prevent cancer, but also have a good effect on preventing cancer itself. It is well known that carotenoids are usually found in large quantities in green and yellow vegetables such as spinach, but the content of carotenoids in wakame is also quite high. It is determined that the content of carotene in every 100 grams of raw spinach is 3100 mg, while the content of carotene in every 100 grams of raw wakame is 1400 mg, and the content of carotene in 100 grams of dried wakame is as high as 3300 mg, which is by no means inferior to that of spinach. Therefore, wakame can get enough carotenoids when eaten together with yellow-green vegetables. In addition, carotenoids are in the same group as vitamin A, which is soluble in fats and oils, so if wakame is eaten with fats and oils, the absorption rate can be increased by almost three times. The utilization of carotenoids is greatly enhanced when wakame salad is topped with salad oil and dressing or lightly sautéed in oil.

Consumption value

Dried wakame

Food fiber has a special function of adsorbing cholesterol and removing it from the body, which is further strengthened when beans, vegetables, and mushrooms, which are rich in plant fiber, are mixed together. Soybeans contain a lot of proteins that can strengthen blood vessels, but these proteins can prevent the effective absorption of iodine, which is a necessary raw material for the synthesis of thyroid hormones. Therefore, if you eat iodine-rich wakame, you will receive a good iodine effect.

In addition, some of the body color blue fish body, containing unsaturated fatty acids to prevent thrombosis, seawater in the body of fish and shellfish contain a large number of minerals and reduce blood pressure effective substances. If these fish and shellfish are consumed together with kohlrabi, the medicinal effect of kohlrabi can be greatly improved.

Methods of consumption

It should be said that the country in the world that has more seaweed dishes is still Japan. Besides Japan, there are a few other countries or parts of the world that consume seaweed. Let's take a look at their consumption methods.

Contraindications

While wakame is good, but there are not easy to eat, because wakame is high in iodine, so when patients suffering from iodine overdose disease, should eat less wakame, China's coastal areas in the high iodine area should eat less wakame, so that you can effectively prevent iodine overdose of the disease occurs.

Main categories

The harvesting period of wakame has a great relationship with the temperature of seawater in that year, and generally speaking, it is mainly concentrated between February and May. If you leave fresh wakame harvested from the sea without processing it right away, it will be digested by its own enzymes, and in a short period of time it will lose its characteristic flavor and luster, and its elasticity will be lost. For this reason, people have been creating various processing methods for wakame to be eaten all year round for a long time, and the wakame we buy in the market is basically a processed product. The types of wakame sold on the market are basically divided into two categories: salted and dried, and each of these categories contains a number of smaller ones.

Dried wakame

This is the oldest method of processing and preserving wakame handed down from the coasts of ancient China. It is made by drying fresh wakame harvested from the sea by laying it out directly in the sunlight, or by washing fresh wakame with fresh water to remove the salt and then laying it out to dry in the sunlight.

Ash-dried wakame

This is a typical method of drying wakame that was invented in the Naruto area of Shikoku at the end of the Edo period, about 150 years ago. Freshly harvested wakame is coated on both sides with wood ash and laid on the beach to dry in the sun for about two days, so that the alkaline effect contained in the ash keeps the wakame alga's characteristic rich green color unchanged throughout the year, and then the ash is washed off with fresh water when it is put on the market, and then it is hung up on a rope to dry into thin strips, which is also called "Narumonojo wakame-rai. It is also called "Narumonjo konbu-rai". In the Meiji Era, dried wakame was the best seafood, and it was treated as a valuable commodity until the war. Dried wakame, which can be stretched out by soaking it in water for 5 to 10 minutes after washing off the ash with water, is a famous product representative of the Shikoku region, and is popular among consumers not only for the bright color of its body, but also for the elasticity of its leaves and its distinctive flavor.

Wakame plate

This is a processing method that produces dried wakame in the Sea of Japan coastline from Shimane Prefecture to Niigata Prefecture. Wakame is harvested from late March to mid-May, and is processed by washing the freshly harvested wakame in fresh water, controlling the water, and then spreading the leaves out and placing them closely together on wooden curtains and drying them in the sunlight to make a very thin sheet of wakame. When sold, kohlrabi boards are usually cut into commercial sizes of 40 to 50 centimeters in length and 20 to 30 centimeters in width. Unlike ordinary dried wakame, it can be grilled over a fire and crunched in the mouth, or crumbled and served over rice.

Salting wakame

This is a method of processing wakame developed around 1965. Fresh kohlrabi is harvested by removing the stems and sporophytes, mixing it with enough salt, stacking it in a woven bag, dehydrating it overnight at a low temperature with a little gravity on top, then removing the dead leaves from the midribs and tips, and then mixing it with salt to preserve it.

Boiling wakame

Also salted wakame, but this product is fresh wakame that is first boiled and then salted, and the color of the processed wakame is very bright. This processing method has been the most widely used since its inception in 1970, but it does not last as long as ash-dried wakame. The processing method of boiling salted wakame is to remove the sporophyte of fresh wakame, boil it in 85℃-100℃ seawater or brine for 30 seconds-50 seconds, then cool it, dehydrate it, add 20%-24% salt, mix it and salted it for 15 hours, then remove the stem, and then Carry out aggravating force dehydration, mix salt and then on the market for sale.

Spore leaves

What is usually called wakame is in a sense incomplete. In general, we eat only the leafy part of wakame, and the cotyledons are the reproductive organs of wakame, located at the base of the wakame stem near the pseudo-root. Not many people used to consume it, probably because of its hard texture, but the number of people consuming it has increased rapidly due to the discovery that wakame spore leaves have the health effects of fucoidan and phycoglycan. The leaves sold in the market are dried products with more mucus. After recovering from soaking in water, it is very tasty to cut them into thin julienne strips with a knife or rub them with a grater board, and add vinegar, soy sauce, and other seasonings to make a cold mix with wakame leaves. The market also appeared in the cold mixed hug Zi Ye finished products.

Wakame stems

Wakame products are produced by utilizing the torn middle ribs and stems in the processing of wakame leaves. The center rib is usually sold as a salted product cut into long strips, which is very popular among households. In addition, the center rib and stem are cut into small pieces and sold in the market as a variety of small dishes.

The above wakame products are sold in the Japanese market. 240,000 tons of fresh wakame have been consumed in Japan every year since 2010, and the largest amount of wakame is boiled and salted. However, the consumption of boiled and dried wakame has been rising year by year, as it is popular among consumers because of its convenience in consumption and ease of preservation.

Consumption area

The American continent

Basically, seaweed is not consumed. In parts of the East Coast, people grind red algae such as carob into powder and mix it in peptones and jams for the sick. In Canada, people grind red skin algae into powder and then made into capsules, as a nutrient sold in the market to supplement the lack of vitamins and minerals. In South America, in addition to supplemental vitamins, people also use seaweed as an important source of protein, such as red skin algae in the dried product of protein content of up to 42%, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin B content is also very rich.

Northern Europe

Iceland and other countries in some areas to eat nori and red skin algae. Some places will be mixed with seaweed in the flour made of bread, there are individual areas in the past will also be mixed with seaweed in baked cigarettes and chewing gum in the mouth to chew; generally with fish, milk, wheat and so on together with boiled and eaten, but also some places will be seaweed juice and cream combined with the seaweed made into seaweed cream Chan in the market sale. Some parts of the Mediterranean Sea use seaweed as a spice in soups, equivalent to the Japanese gazpacho.

Southeast Asia

India and other countries like to eat the red algae such as rockweed and other production of agaric, Indonesians also like to eat some red algae as a small dish. Vietnamese people like to eat some red algae with high gelatin content boiled and flavored with sugar, and it is said that the colloid of these seaweeds was exported to France during the colonial era.

China

The use of kelp as a remedy for great-neckedness began to be exported inland from the coast of the South China Sea a long time ago in inland China, centered in Sichuan. Sargassum species were traditionally used as Chinese herbs to make tea for their expectorant effects. Wakame and kelp are representative seaweeds in a wide variety of dishes, and rockweed is also used in large quantities in the famous bird's nest and shark's fin soup. Petrels look for rockweed species from the sea, eat them in their stomachs and then spit them out. Due to the chemical action of gastric juices, the rockweed becomes a translucent gelatinous substance, and the petrels stick the gelatinous substance on their feathers to build a bird's nest, so the bird's nest soup that we are talking about is actually the soup of the sea bird's nest.

Korea

There are about 40 kinds of edible seaweeds such as wakame naturally distributed in the Korean Peninsula. As if that should be the case: in Korea, some seaweeds that are not favored by the Japanese, such as pineweed, arakabu, and centipede seaweed, are enjoyed by the locals, while seaweeds such as deer antler seaweed and kangaroo seaweed, which are favored by the Japanese, are not much consumed by the Koreans. The nori cultivation industry in Korea is also gradually developing, and the production of nori is almost half of the total production in Japan. In addition, the market consumption of wakame is high, with the average annual consumption per person being about twice that of Japan. Koreans also like to eat nori, but do not attach as much importance to the flavor of nori as the Japanese do, preferring to eat it after mixing it with pepper, garlic and sesame oil.