(328a) 15a Plenary Lecture: Production of Functional Foods by Microalgae, a Rich but Highly Untapped Resource

Microalgae are highly potential sources of functional foods or functional food ingredients. Microalgae are known to be the earliest organisms existing on earth, and represent a huge family consisting of over 50,000 species with vast genetic and metabolic diversity, but the discoveries of microalgae as functional foods or functional food ingredients are very recent. Microalgae can produce large quantities of bioactive substances most of which are unique to microalgae. Microalgae are believed to be the primary producers of many bioactive molecules in the food chain. Despite the great potential for microalgae for commercial application, large-scale production of microalgal functional foods, however, is often hindered by the inability to develop a cost-effective industrial process, mainly due to the poor understanding of the biological characteristics of the various microalgal species and the application of appropriate engineering principles in the development of a biological system. Given the fact most microalgae cannot achieve a high cell density and high productivity in conventional photoautotrophic culture although they are considered photosynthetic organisms. This lecture aims to overcome such a problem by developing a heterotrophic process in which the requirement for light and carbon dioxide in photoautotrophic culture is eliminated, and as a result the process can be readily operated and optimized. A heterotrophic process, on the other hand, may be modified to become a mixotrophic process by using both organic carbon and light for the production of light-induced products such as some high-value pigments. The various cultivation processes for algal functional food production are further examined with the application of molecular biology and chemical engineering principles and techniques.