The first person to eat abalone was a Chinese, and the first person to measure the heartbeat of abalone was also a Chinese!

According to the visible written records, the first people to eat abalone were the Chinese. As early as the time when "abalone" was still called "鳆鱼" or even earlier, it had already been served on the tables of our ancestors.

Cao Zhi once wrote in "A Memorial to the Emperor Requesting Sacrifice to the Former King": "The former king liked to eat abalone. I have already petitioned Zang Ba of Xuzhou to send 200 abalones, which are enough for the service." It can be seen that abalone was not only a food ingredient in ancient times, but also a precious food ingredient. Even in such a large-scale activity as offering sacrifices to the former kings that involved the efforts of the entire country, only 200 abalones were available.

Delicious abalone

Scarcity makes things valuable, and food is the most important thing for people. In 1983, when Hong Kong's economy was booming, the founder of Fulin Hotel seized the opportunity and launched the original "Ah Yat Abalone". Although the price was thousands or even tens of thousands, it was still very popular and has been ranked among the top ten famous Cantonese dishes by the China Cantonese Cuisine Summit. Nowadays, we can buy a hot "abalone" for a meal at a double-digit price by opening any food delivery platform app.

So, when did abalone become cheap?

Behind this lies the history of Chinese people's culinary evolution, taste changes and overseas trade. It also hides the struggle of scientific researchers like Professor You Weiwei of the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences of Xiamen University and his team, who have been at the forefront for decades and trying to find ways to add value to Chinese abalone.

You Weiwei

Cultivating local abalone

"I keep abalone as a pet," You Weiwei said today. But in 2003, when he was admitted to Xiamen University as a graduate student, he actually first learned what abalone looked like. It was this "friend" who asked him the first difficult question in his career.

In the 1990s, through the efforts of all parties, scientists had already successfully achieved the artificial breeding of abalone, and the aquaculture industry developed rapidly, but countless diseases also followed: "low temperature virus", "deplating disease", "explosive mortality disease in the cultivation stage" ... causing heavy losses to the fishermen.

what to do?

At that time, many people were asking You Weiwei this question, and even You Weiwei kept asking himself. After being approved to participate in the first state-supported abalone breeding "863" project, he began to firmly believe in an idea: he must breed a new variety of abalone with high disease resistance in China.

"In fact, I was still unfamiliar with abalone at that time, but I knew that the core part of breeding is materials. Without suitable breeding materials, no matter how good the technology is, it is useless." Therefore, in the past four years, he and his team went to islands and beaches to collect wild germplasm resources of abalone. "I was fortunate enough to travel to all natural areas where the variegated abalone is distributed."

The "variegated abalone" mentioned by You Weiwei is a commonly cultivated species of southern abalone represented by Fujian. It came to the mainland of China in the 1990s as aquaculture operators from Taiwan Province invested. It is also one of the important cornerstones of the "Dongyou No. 1" variegated abalone, the first national-level new aquatic variety in Fujian Province that he cultivated. The other paternal line is produced in Japan.

Abalone

Thanks to the successful cases of shellfish farming in the past, You Weiwei and his team decided to use hybridization to breed a new type of abalone with high disease resistance after anchoring the breeding materials. However, no one knew whether it would be successful. The bigger challenge was that abalone is a special species that hides during the day and comes out at night. The breeding process takes place in autumn every year. That is to say, every autumn, You Weiwei and his team members can't sleep well.

After six autumns, the good news finally came from the fishermen. When You Weiwei heard that "a hybrid combination has a survival rate of 80%", he knew that the project was only one step away from success, that is, promotion. "After we were lucky enough to find this new variety, the aquaculture industry was very happy to introduce it, and it didn't take too much effort. In particular, Taiwan Province was very enthusiastic to invite us to conduct a field investigation." After more than three years of hard work, "Dongyou No. 1" successfully accounted for 70% of Taiwan Province's abalone farming production. As abalone's vitality gradually became stronger and its production gradually increased, it was able to "fly into the homes of ordinary people".

Measuring the heartbeat of abalone

But challenges are still coming. Due to the vast territory of my country, the biggest difference between the north and the south is the climate and temperature, which troubles humans and also tests abalone. "At that time, there were only two main 'indigenous' aquaculture species in my country. The south generally cultivated abalone with different colors, while the north cultivated abalone with wrinkled disc. Many southern practitioners introduced abalone with wrinkled disc from the north to Fujian for breeding, but due to the average seawater temperature difference of up to 8°C, these abalones were not able to adapt to the local climate in the south, and the mortality rate during the summer was very high."

Abalone discus hinggi

The fishermen's solution to this problem is to use live water boats and live water trucks to transport abalone to the north to spend the summer before the summer comes. When the temperature in the north starts to drop in November, the abalone is transported back to Fujian to spend the winter. Not to mention that a journey is at least thousands of kilometers, the risks and costs of transporting tens of thousands of tons of abalone cannot be underestimated. Therefore, another challenge facing scholars such as You Weiwei is "how to withstand high temperatures."

The technology is still hybrid technology, but the difficulty lies in that people are tall, short, fat and thin, and can be easily measured with a scale or a ruler, but what about abalone? The experimental link of "how to determine whether abalone can withstand high temperatures by appearance" once made You Weiwei's team helpless. It was not until George Somero, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and Professor of Stanford University, brought a new technology - to evaluate the survival method of shellfish by measuring their heartbeats, that You Weiwei suddenly had an epiphany and thought of a research method to measure the heartbeat of abalone.

"Abalone is a cold-blooded animal. As the temperature rises, its heart rate will get faster and faster. But when it reaches a certain level, it will first have an irregular heart rate, and then a heart rate inflection point, which is easy to observe. However, the most important advantage of this method is that abalone will not die during the experiment, so good varieties can be selected and the next generation can be bred accordingly."

Six years later, You Weiwei's team successfully obtained the second new species cultivated by themselves - Abalone occidentalis, which has improved its high temperature resistance by 2.2℃. Although the number seems small, it has actually touched the critical life and death line of abalone, enough to stop the fishermen who raise abalone in southern Fujian from "making a big fuss".

Abalone

The success of the "Second Battle" sounded the clarion call for the "Third Battle". After solving the above problems, my country has become the world's largest abalone producer, but the output value does not match the cause, because of the lack of large-sized abalone. At present, although You Weiwei's team has cultivated a palm-sized, 1-jin-weight green abalone through the distant hybridization technology system, he is not satisfied with this, and is still trying to innovatively launch the "abalone pearls" industry hot product, committed to opening up a new path for China's seawater pearl industry.

"Time never stops, and so do we. In the future, I hope everyone can easily taste the deliciousness of abalone. I also hope that more and more high-end abalone will come from our country," he said.