review · Botanical studies
Microalgae and seaweeds have a long history of use in combating food shortages, with species such as Spirulina, Nostoc, Aphanizomenon, and Pyropia serving as foods and traditional medicines. Modern biotechnological approaches now harvest a wide range of algal bioactive compounds, including polysaccharides like agar, alginate, and carrageenan, which function as gelling agents across the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic sectors. Controlled cultivation and stress conditions also allow algal cells to accumulate valuable compounds, notably pigments like astaxanthin, polyunsaturated fatty acids, proteins, and polyphenols for industrial feedstocks. Beyond commercial product formulation, algae play a substantial role in environmental bioremediation. Ongoing advancements also cover emerging areas including bioplastics and nanoparticle synthesis, alongside addressing technical limitations associated with current harvesting and processing methods.
Algae offer sustainable biological solutions to several modern challenges, from nutritional security to environmental cleanup. By yielding functional ingredients for food, health, and cosmetics alongside industrial feedstocks, microalgae and seaweeds provide renewable alternatives to synthetic compounds. Understanding how these organisms can be cultivated, processed, and scaled helps industries transition towards greener manufacturing and effective waste remediation.
The sector encompasses both commercialised products and early-stage concepts. Polysaccharides and pigments already supply established markets in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and food production. Emerging sectors, including algal bioplastics and nanoparticle synthesis, remain in the development phase. Commercial viability depends on refining cultivation technologies and overcoming processing limitations to improve yields of target bioactive compounds for manufacturing and bioremediation users.
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Microalgae and seaweed have been consumed as food for several decades to combat starvation and food shortages worldwide. The most famous edible microalgae species are Nostoc, Spirulina, and Aphanizomenon, in addition to seaweeds, which are used in traditional medicine and food, such as Nori, which is one of the most popular foods containing Pyropia alga as a major ingredient. Recently, many applications use algae-derived polysaccharides such as agar, alginate, carrageenan, cellulose, fucoidan, mannan, laminarin, ulvan, and xylan as gelling agents in food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics industries. Moreover, pigments (carotenoids particularly astaxanthins, chlorophylls, and phycobilins), minerals, vitamins, polyunsaturated fatty acids, peptides, proteins, polyphenols, and diterpenes compounds are accumulated under specific cultivation and stress conditions in the algal cells to be harvested and their biomass used as a feedstock for the relevant industries and applications. No less critical is the use of algae in bioremediation, thus contributing significantly to environmental sustainability.This review will explore and discuss the various applications of microalgae and seaweeds, emphasising their role in bioremediation, recent products with algal added-value compounds that are now on the market, and novel under-developing applications such as bioplastics and nanoparticle production. Nonetheless, special attention is also drawn towards the limitations of these applications and the technologies applied, and how they may be overcome.
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DOI: 10.1186/s40529-024-00434-y
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