page_title: Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker
section_title: Research supporting commercial seaweed cultivation
hierarchical_section_title: Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker / Academic career / Research supporting commercial seaweed cultivation
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 熊本県宇土市の住吉自然公園内にある、キャスリン・メアリー・ドゥルー・ベーカー女史（海藻学者、糸状体の発見者）の顕彰碑English: The celebration monument of Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker（Kumamoto Prefecture Uto City）
context_page_description: Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker was a British phycologist, known for her research on the edible seaweed Porphyra laciniata, which led to a breakthrough for commercial cultivation.
  Kathleen Drew-Baker's scientific legacy is revered in Japan, where she has been named Mother of the Sea. Her work is celebrated each year on 14 April. A monument to her was erected in 1963 at the Sumiyoshi shrine in Uto, Kumamoto, Japan.
context_section_description: Although Drew-Baker never travelled to Japan, her academic research made a lasting contribution to the development of commercial nori production in the country. Drew-Baker studied the life cycle of the red algae Porphyra umbilicalis and in an academic paper published in Nature in 1949, Drew-Baker detailed her research showing that the microscopic Conchocelis — hitherto thought of as an independent alga — was the diploid stage of the organism of which Porphyra is the macroscopic, haploid stage. Her critical discovery was that at the microscopic conchocelis stage, bivalves and bivalve shells provided an essential host environment for the development of the red algae.
  Drew-Baker's investigations were soon read and replicated by the Japanese phycologist Sokichi Segawa, who applied Drew-Baker's findings to the Japanese nori seaweed, widely known for its use in sushi and other staples of Japanese cuisine. Although nori had been commercially harvested in Japan since the 17th century, it had always suffered from unpredictable harvests and had been particularly prone to damage from typhoons and pollution in coastal waters. By 1953, Fusao Ota and other Japanese marine biologists had developed artificial seeding techniques, building on her work. This in turn increased production and led to a significant increase in production in the Japanese seaweed industry.
  In honour of her contributions to the Japanese aquaculture and role in rescuing the commercial production of nori, she was named Mother of the Sea in Japan, and since 1953, an annual "Drew festival" is celebrated in the city of Uto, Kumamoto in Japan, where a shrine to her was also erected.
  Between 1924 and 1947 Drew-Baker published 47 academic papers mainly concerned with red algae. Her book A Revision of the Genera Chantransia, Rhodochorton, and Acrohaetium. With descriptions of the marine species of Rhodochorton, Naeg., Gen. Emend. on the Pacific Coast of North America was published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, in 1928.
  She was a co-founder of the British Phycological Society in 1952 with her friend and fellow phycologist Margaret T. Martin and its first elected president.
caption: Drew-Baker's monument in Uto
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