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Developing algae as a sustainable food source
Current agricultural and food production practices are facing extreme stress, posed by climate change and an ever-increasing human population. The pressure to feed nearly 8 billion people while maintaining a minimal impact on the environment has prompted a movement toward new, more sustainable food...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9892066/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36742010 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1029841 |
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author | Diaz, Crisandra J. Douglas, Kai J. Kang, Kalisa Kolarik, Ashlynn L. Malinovski, Rodeon Torres-Tiji, Yasin Molino, João V. Badary, Amr Mayfield, Stephen P. |
author_facet | Diaz, Crisandra J. Douglas, Kai J. Kang, Kalisa Kolarik, Ashlynn L. Malinovski, Rodeon Torres-Tiji, Yasin Molino, João V. Badary, Amr Mayfield, Stephen P. |
author_sort | Diaz, Crisandra J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Current agricultural and food production practices are facing extreme stress, posed by climate change and an ever-increasing human population. The pressure to feed nearly 8 billion people while maintaining a minimal impact on the environment has prompted a movement toward new, more sustainable food sources. For thousands of years, both the macro (seaweed and kelp) and micro (unicellular) forms of algae have been cultivated as a food source. Algae have evolved to be highly efficient at resource utilization and have proven to be a viable source of nutritious biomass that could address many of the current food production issues. Particularly for microalgae, studies of their large-scale growth and cultivation come from the biofuel industry; however, this knowledge can be reasonably translated into the production of algae-based food products. The ability of algae to sequester CO(2) lends to its sustainability by helping to reduce the carbon footprint of its production. Additionally, algae can be produced on non-arable land using non-potable water (including brackish or seawater), which allows them to complement rather than compete with traditional agriculture. Algae inherently have the desired qualities of a sustainable food source because they produce highly digestible proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates, and are rich in essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. Although algae have yet to be fully domesticated as food sources, a variety of cultivation and breeding tools exist that can be built upon to allow for the increased productivity and enhanced nutritional and organoleptic qualities that will be required to bring algae to mainstream utilization. Here we will focus on microalgae and cyanobacteria to highlight the current advancements that will expand the variety of algae-based nutritional sources, as well as outline various challenges between current biomass production and large-scale economic algae production for the food market. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9892066 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-98920662023-02-03 Developing algae as a sustainable food source Diaz, Crisandra J. Douglas, Kai J. Kang, Kalisa Kolarik, Ashlynn L. Malinovski, Rodeon Torres-Tiji, Yasin Molino, João V. Badary, Amr Mayfield, Stephen P. Front Nutr Nutrition Current agricultural and food production practices are facing extreme stress, posed by climate change and an ever-increasing human population. The pressure to feed nearly 8 billion people while maintaining a minimal impact on the environment has prompted a movement toward new, more sustainable food sources. For thousands of years, both the macro (seaweed and kelp) and micro (unicellular) forms of algae have been cultivated as a food source. Algae have evolved to be highly efficient at resource utilization and have proven to be a viable source of nutritious biomass that could address many of the current food production issues. Particularly for microalgae, studies of their large-scale growth and cultivation come from the biofuel industry; however, this knowledge can be reasonably translated into the production of algae-based food products. The ability of algae to sequester CO(2) lends to its sustainability by helping to reduce the carbon footprint of its production. Additionally, algae can be produced on non-arable land using non-potable water (including brackish or seawater), which allows them to complement rather than compete with traditional agriculture. Algae inherently have the desired qualities of a sustainable food source because they produce highly digestible proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates, and are rich in essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. Although algae have yet to be fully domesticated as food sources, a variety of cultivation and breeding tools exist that can be built upon to allow for the increased productivity and enhanced nutritional and organoleptic qualities that will be required to bring algae to mainstream utilization. Here we will focus on microalgae and cyanobacteria to highlight the current advancements that will expand the variety of algae-based nutritional sources, as well as outline various challenges between current biomass production and large-scale economic algae production for the food market. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-19 /pmc/articles/PMC9892066/ /pubmed/36742010 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1029841 Text en Copyright © 2023 Diaz, Douglas, Kang, Kolarik, Malinovski, Torres-Tiji, Molino, Badary and Mayfield. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Nutrition Diaz, Crisandra J. Douglas, Kai J. Kang, Kalisa Kolarik, Ashlynn L. Malinovski, Rodeon Torres-Tiji, Yasin Molino, João V. Badary, Amr Mayfield, Stephen P. Developing algae as a sustainable food source |
title | Developing algae as a sustainable food source |
title_full | Developing algae as a sustainable food source |
title_fullStr | Developing algae as a sustainable food source |
title_full_unstemmed | Developing algae as a sustainable food source |
title_short | Developing algae as a sustainable food source |
title_sort | developing algae as a sustainable food source |
topic | Nutrition |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9892066/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36742010 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1029841 |
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