Relevance to industry priorities and to Seafood CRC Milestones:
Relevance to Output 1.7 Smart processing technologies and practices.
Addresses the industry priority of New high-value products derived from Australian sea cucumber and New Australian Aquaculture industry for sea cucumber products.
Australian seafood processing co-products, such as SCV are currently discarded. To sustain the future growth of the seafood industry, it is essential to turn these wastes into resources for the development of value-added opportunities for the seafood industry. This area of research has been identified by both Australian seafood industry and the CRC program, through our engagement with seafood processors such as Tasmanian Seafoods Pty. Ltd.
The Flinders Centre for Marine Bioproducts and Bioprocessing has been set up to meet this R&D challenge for the Australian seafood industry. Our engagement with industry partners, particularly Tasmanian Seafoods Pty. Ltd., and extensive consultations with CRC Program Leaders, especially Dr John Carragher, has assisted us in developing this proposal.
The results of the project will make a significant contribution to the sustainable utilization of Australian sea cucumber resources by developing value-added bioproducts from sea cucumber processing wastes, such as the viscera of the sea cucumber. This in turn will significantly aid the growth of the industry, especially into export markets where demand for high-quality Australian seafood products has been increasing.
This project will contribute to the CRC Milestones 1.7.3 “Innovative technologies and approaches to recover under-utilized product (by-catch and processing by-products) trialled and evaluated from at least one sector per annum”.
Final report
Sea cucumbers are prolific producers of a wide range of bioactive compounds, which are potential sources of agrichemical, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical products.
Sea cucumbers expel their internal organs as a defence mechanism called evisceration. We hypothesize that the reason for their ingenious form of defence is because their internal organs contain high levels of compounds that repel predators. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the contribution of saponins from the viscera of any sea cucumber species. Therefore, this project is aimed at the characterisation of the triterpene glycosides, saponins, from the viscera (and body wall) of selected Australian sea cucumber species using high-throughput technologies such as HPCPC and mass spectrometry. The longer term aim is to develop the novel compounds for pharmaceutical or nutraceutical or cosmeceutical application. We will describe the saponin distributions of Holothuria lessoni and Stichopus hermanni in detailed as representatives of two different families to reveal how their saponin profiles are different.
