Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Seaweeds: A Promising Source
for Sustainable Development
T. Nedumaran and D. Arulbalachandran
Abstract
Macroscopic marine algae, popularly known as seaweeds, form one of
the important living resources of the ocean. Seaweeds form an important
renewable resource in the marine environment and have been a part of
human civilization from time immemorial. Reports on the uses of sea-
weeds have been cited as early as 2,500 years ago. Seaweed utilization
for a variety of purposes has led to the gradual realization that some of
their constituents are more superior and valuable in comparison to their
counterparts on land. Seaweeds synthesize a wide range of chemicals,
some of which are the only natural resources of agar, carrageenan,
and alginate. These have been used as food for human beings, feed for
animals, natural biofertilizers for plants and source of various chemicals
like pharmaceutical values without any side effects, production of
biodiesel and wastewater management, etc. In this chapter, utilization of
seaweeds has been obviously discussed which are proving and playing a
crucial role in sustainable development to became a promising source
for human welfare.
Keywords
Biofertilizers Biofuels Animal feed Pharmaceutical value
1
Introduction
Seaweeds or benthic marine algae are the group
of plants that live either in marine or brackish
water environment. Like the terrestrial plants,
seaweeds contain photosynthetic pigments, and
with the help of sunlight and nutrient present in
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