Edis Koru

Seaweeds for Food and Industrial Applications

Marine macroalgae, or the term seaweeds, are plant-like organisms that generally live attached to rock or other hard substrata in coastal areas. The classification into divisions is based on various properties such as pigmentation, chemical nature of photosynthetic storage product, the organization of photosynthetic membranes, and other morphological fea‐ tures. Traditionally, they belong to four different groups, empirically distinguished since the mid-nineteenth century on the basis of color: blue-green algae (phylum: Cyanophyta, up to 1500 species), red algae (phylum: Rhodophyta, about 6000 species), brown algae (phylum: Ochrophyta, classes: Phaeophyceae, about 1750 species), and green algae (phylum: Chlorophyta, classes: Bryopsidophyceae, Chlorophyceae, Dasycladophyceae, Prasinophy‐ ceae, and Ulvophyceae, about 1200 species). However, each of these groups has microscop‐ ics, if not unicellular, represantatives. All seaweeds at some stage in their life cycles are unicellular, as spores or zygotes, and may be temporarily planktonic. The blue-green algae are widesperead on temperate rocky and sandy shores and have occasionally been acknowledged in seaweed floras. Seaweeds are found growing throughouth the world oceans and seas none is found to be poisonous (Bold and Wyne, 1985; Guiry, 2009; Lobban and Harrison, 2000). Why seaweed is important? Most people don’t realize how impor‐ tant marine macroalgae are, both ecologically and commercially. In fact, seaweeds are crucial primary producer in oceanic aquatic food webs. They are rich both in minerals and essential trace elements, and raw materials for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry (Chap‐ man, 1970). Seaweed is a very versatile product widely used for food in direct human consumption. Its classified taxonomically as algae and they represent a food group that is not normally ingested in unprocessed form to any great extent in Western societies. Humankind is no strangers to the use of algae as a food source. Even if seaweeds have been used as a human food since ancient times, particularly in the region bounded by China, the

Earth Food Spirulina (Arthrospira): Production and Quality Standarts

According to researchers, in the first photosynthetic life forms known on earth 3.6 billion years ago, was created by the God. Blue-green algae, cyanobacteria, is the evolutionary bridge between bacteria and green plants. It contained within it everything life needed to evolve. This immortal plant has renewed itself for billions of years, and has presented itself to us in the last 40 years. Spirulina has 3.6 billion years of evolutionary wisdom coded in its DNA. Spirulina, or what was most likely Arthrospira, is a photosynthetic, filamentous, spiralshaped, multicellular and blue-green microalga that has a long history of use as food. For this microorganism contain chlorophyll a, like higher plants, botanists classify it as a microalga belonging to Cyanophyceae class; but according to bacteriologists it is a bacterium due to its prokaryotic structure (Fig. 1). Spirulina, essentially an exceptional simple extract of blue-green algae, has been extensively studied and is now in widespread usage throughout the world as a food product and as a dietary supplement (Fox, 1996; Paleaz, 2006).