Abstract
World population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. Depletion of food resources is estimated to occur due to the consequences of climate changes in crops and loss of arable soil. Sustainability in food resources management is pivotal to guarantee nutritious food supply. Seaweeds are, historically, a food source. Currently, they are gaining more attention since many studies highlight their nutritional characteristics, physicochemical properties, and low production inputs requirements. Yet, lack of reliability and consistency in the seaweed quality assays, in part due to algae variability and unoptimized analysis methods, hinders their commercialization. This chapter discusses the current methods used to assess the qualitative and quantitative analysis of seaweed, their advantages, and limitations, and also addresses bottlenecks of the development/industrialization, in the view to guarantee the seaweed safety and security in the food industry and to human consumption.
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Acknowledgments
This work is financed by national funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the projects UIDB/04292/2020—MARE—Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre and UIDP/50017/2020 + UIDB/50017/2020 (by FCT/MTCES) granted to CESAM—Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies. João Cotas thanks to the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Atlantic Area Program, under the project NASPA (EAPA_451/2016). Diana Pacheco thanks to PTDC/BIA-CBI/31144/2017-POCI-01 project-0145-FEDER-031144-MARINE INVADERS, co-financed by the ERDF through POCI (Operational Program Competitiveness and Internationalization) and by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, IP). Ana M. M. Gonçalves acknowledges University of Coimbra for the contract IT057-18-7253 and also thanks to the project MENU—Marine Macroalgae: Alternative recipes for a daily nutritional diet (FA_05_2017_011), funded by the Blue Fund under Public Notice No. 5—Blue Biotechnology. Artur Figueirinha thanks FCT/MCTES, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior through grant UIDB/50006/2020.
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Monteiro, P. et al. (2022). Seaweed as Food: How to Guarantee Their Quality?. In: Ranga Rao, A., Ravishankar, G.A. (eds) Sustainable Global Resources of Seaweeds Volume 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92174-3_16
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