New perspective in fisheries product development: importance of seaweeds as biomass resources

Abstract

Brown seaweeds have an important role to preserve coastal ecosystems. Brown seaweeds are also major class for aquacultured seaweeds. They contain valuable nutrients and bioactive components and some of them have not been found in terrestrial plants. Especially, much attention has been paid to brown seaweed lipids because of their high functionality. Several brown seaweeds show high total lipids (TL) contents, ranging from 10-20 wt% per dry weight. The lipids are rich in functional 18:4n-3, 20:5n-3 and 20:4n-6. Brown seaweed TL also contains fucoxanthin as a key functional compound. Brown seaweed lipids show anti-obesity and anti-diabetic effects, which are mainly due to the up-regulatory effect of fucoxanthin on energy expenditure in abdominal white adipose tissue and glucose utilization in muscle.