Title : An Optimistic Foresight of Microalgal Biotechnology
Abstract:
Microalgae are most primitive oxygen evolving photosynthetic organisms appeared 3.2 billion years ago growing in almost all environmental conditions. They are with simplest morphology, without having root, stems or leaves and having naked reproductive structures ranging from unicellular, colonial, simple filamentous form .Algal Biotechnology have had a long history especially in the food industry initially used by people of China (eg. Nostoc Commune) .Microalgae are the inexpensive source of different bioactive compounds like, carotenoids, pigments, proteins and vitamins etc., which are being used recently for the production of nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, animal feed additives and cosmetics. Due to their aquatic habitats algae are widely used in the commercial rearing of many aquatic animals, especially the fishes and penaeid prawn larvae either in live form or as feed ingredients of ‘Value added feed’. Due to coastal water pollution and other factors there is a continuous decline in natural fish catch, which has led to an ever increasing focus on aquaculture. Application of different microalgae from Sunderban –the largest Mangrove Forest as value added feed ingredients for colored fishes carp fishes at field level would be discussed. Algae have their inherent capacity for phytoremediation of toxic chemicals. Over the past few decades a significant attention has been paid to toxic and precious metal removal employing phycoremediation technique for environmental protection. Different selectivities of various algae towards different metals are generally exploited in precious metal separation process and removal of toxic metals including stable metals and radionuclides .Therefore, Phycoremediation or use of algae as bio-reagent in metal removal process is considered as one of the most suitable methods for environmental management. Use of local strain, Leptolyngbya valderiana in arsenic removal process to be discussed using a designed Biofilter and their mechanism is an interesting study of Algal biotechnology. Phyco-nanotechnology is another promising field of algal biotechnology, where exploiting algal biomass as bioreagent, several metal nanoparticles like gold, silver,Fe,Cu and Cr and their alloys can be produced in green technology based process and their use in different fields ,like antibacterial, anti-cancerous and in fruit preservation appeared to be very effective. For any biotechnological program local strain exploitation is more effective, therefore algal diversity study and the cultivation of potential strains at field level would be discussed as prerequisite of Algal biotechnology
