102 a. 3. Results 3.1. Seaweed morphology and colour and identification As is usual with Kappaphycus species, there were considerable differences in morphology and colour observed across the various farming sites (Zuccarello et al., 2006). For the ten sites used in this study, summaries of morphology and colour are listed in Table 2. Cultured K. alvarezii from Mamuju, Lombok and Banten had a long thallus (20–30 cm) with numerous branches. In contrast, cultures from Gorontalo, Lampung and Bantaeng had a short thallus (Table 2). Colour varied from bright green to light brown and dark brown in seaweed from different sites (Table 2). All samples from this study were genetically identified as K. alvarezii using the COI marker (Ratnawati et al., 2020). They were all of an identical COI genotype, corresponding to the main cultivated K. alvarezii genotype (Genbank Accession number: KT316556) (Dumilag et al., 2016; Ratnawati et al., 2020; Zuccarello et al., 2006). 3.2. Water quality Water quality data from all 10 sites indicated conditions suitable for culture of K. alvarezii (Table 3). Water temperature ranged from 27.1–33.2 ◦C, salinity from 32.5– 36.8, DO from 4.0–8.6 mg/L, and pH from 7.5–8.5 (Table 3). For most of the sites sampled, water quality parameters were close to the optimal range for K. alvarezii culture
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