![]() ![]() ![]() They are generally more efficient in converting solar energy into biomass, mainly because of their simple cellular structure and being submerged in an aqueous environment with access to water, CO 2, and other nutrients. Their photosynthetic mechanism is similar to that of land-based plants. Edible seaweeds were widely consumed, especially in Asian countries (e.g., Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, and Vietnam, but also in South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belize, Peru, Chile, the Canadian Maritimes, Scandinavia, South West England, Ireland, Wales, California, Philippines, and Scotland) as fresh, dried, or ingredients in prepared foods. Nowadays, seaweeds are major coastal resources which are valuable to human consumption and environment in many countries. However, as nationals from these countries have migrated to other parts of the Earth, the demand for seaweedfor food has followed them, for example, in some parts of the North and South America. Today those countries are the largest consumers of marine algae as food. But the commercial exploitation of this resource is only a few decades old, after World War II, when the focus was set on a possible insufficient protein supply due to the rapid increase of the world population. Even if seaweeds have been used as a human food since ancient times, particularly in the region bounded by China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Humankind is no strangers to the use of algae as a food source. 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. Seaweed is a very versatile product widely used for food in direct human consumption. They are rich both in minerals and essential trace elements, and raw materials for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry ( Chapman, 1970). ![]() In fact, seaweeds are crucial primary producer in oceanic aquatic food webs. Why seaweed is important? Most people don’t realize how important marine macroalgae are, both ecologically and commercially. 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). The blue-green algae are widesperead on temperate rocky and sandy shores and have occasionally been acknowledged in seaweed floras. All seaweeds at some stage in their life cycles are unicellular, as spores or zygotes, and may be temporarily planktonic. However, each of these groups has microscopics, if not unicellular, represantatives. 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, Prasinophyceae, and Ulvophyceae, about 1200 species). 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 features. Marine macroalgae, or the term seaweeds, are plant-like organisms that generally live attached to rock or other hard substrata in coastal areas. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |