Nannochloropsis microalgae. Credit: CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Algae. It’s what’s for dinner. This variation on the enduring US promoting slogan from the meat trade could sound humorous, nevertheless it’s no joke that the present agriculture system is a significant supply of greenhouse fuel emissions and environmental air pollution. In flip, the local weather disaster and ecosystem degradation threaten long-term meals safety for billions of individuals around the globe.
Researchers on the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), imagine algae may very well be a brand new sort of superfood because of its excessive protein and diet content material. They make their case in a paper lately revealed within the journal Frontiers in Nutrition that examines the present scientific literature on microalgae, a catch-all time period for the hundreds of microscopic algal species and different photosynthetic organisms like cyanobacteria present in numerous aquatic environments.
A extra environment friendly meals supply
The evaluation highlights the present applied sciences for commercially growing and rising microalgae, in addition to the scientific and financial challenges to scaling manufacturing. While lengthy studied as a supply of biofuel because of their excessive lipid or fats content material, algae are additionally attracting curiosity from researchers due to their potential to be a extra environment friendly meals supply.
“Many of us have identified the potential of algae for meals for years, and have been engaged on it as a meals supply, however now, with local weather change, deforestation, and a inhabitants of eight billion folks, most everybody realizes that the world merely has to turn into extra environment friendly in protein manufacturing,” stated co-author Dr. Stephen Mayfield, a professor of biology at UCSD and director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology.
For occasion, a 2014 examine cited within the present paper…
2023-01-19 00:00:01 Microalgae may very well be the way forward for sustainable superfood in a quickly altering world, examine finds
Original from phys.org