Saccharina japonica

Saccharina japonica is a marine species of the Phaeophyceae (brown algae) plant, a type of kelp or seaweed, that is extensively cultivated on ropes between the seas of Japan and Korea. It is widely eaten in East Asia. A commercially important species, S. japonica is also called ma-konbu (真昆布) in Japanese, dasima (다시마) in Korean and hǎidài (海带) in Chinese. Large harvests are produced by rope cultivation which is a simple method of growing seaweeds by attaching them to floating ropes in the ocean. The species has been cultivated in China, Japan, Russia, France and Korea. It is one of the two most consumed species of kelp in China and Japan. Saccharina japonica is also used for the production of alginates, with China producing up to ten thousand tons of the product each year. Consuming excessive S. japonica suppresses thyroid function. The species was transferred to Saccharina in 2006. Three synonyms for this species name are Laminaria japonica (J. E. Areschoug 1851), its variety Laminaria japonica var. ochotensis (Miyabe Okamura 1936) and Laminaria ochotensis (Miyabe 1902). With the development of cultivation technology, though over 90% of Japanese kombu is cultivated mostly in Hokkaidō, production can also be found as far as south of the Seto Inland Sea. In Korean cuisine, dasima is used to make broth, deep-fried into bugak or twigak (coated and uncoated fries), pickled in soy sauce as jangajji, and eaten raw as a sea vegetable for ssam (wraps). It is also used to make dasima-cha (kelp tea). Cheonsa-chae (kelp noodles) is made from the alginic acid from dasima.