Salicornia: evaluating the halophytic extremophile as a food and a pharmaceutical candidate

Abstract

Food insecurity is a major issue in current scenario where a large section of mankind is at risk of insufficient diet. As food productivity has its limits, the prospecting of unutilized or underutilized flora as food candidates is collectively recognized as a sustainable option. In the past decade, a number of obscure plants have been identified to be rich in dietary components and deemed fit for integration into the food platter. This review discusses a candidate Salicornia, belonging to family Amaranthaceae. This halophyte has a broad geographical distribution, and phytochemical profiling has indicated its food relevance. An array of functional nutrients as fibers, polyphenols, and flavonoids have been detected in Salicornia. Though high salt, oxalate and saponin content in the plants are anti-nutrients, they can be removed to justify usage of Salicornia as a ‘sea vegetable’. Apart from culinary relevance, medicinal attributes like immunomodulatory, lipid-lowering, antiproliferative, osteoprotective, and hypoglycemic render this lesser-known marsh plant significant for phytochemical studies. This appraisal is expected to be useful towards further research and popularization of this extremophile halophyte.

Unraveling Plant Natural Chemical Diversity for Drug Discovery Purposes

“…On the other hand, secondary metabolites synthetized by microorganisms growing in extreme conditions might also be difficult to obtain in large quantities. It would be therefore interesting to dig deeper in this area, as it has been done elsewhere for other purposes: biotechnological Mokashe et al, 2018), industrial (Sarmiento et al, 2015), pharmaceutical (Irwin, 2010;Karker et al, 2016;Patel, 2016;Oliveira et al, 2018), or ecological (Casillo et al, 2018;Orellana et al, 2018). Finally, Table 4 gives many examples of compounds isolated from different plant species and different tissues from these species.…”

Environmental and Management Considerations for Adopting the Halophyte Salicornia bigelovii Torr. as a Sustainable Seawater-Irrigated Crop.

“…In this context, mankind will have to diversify production schemes, including the integration of livestock, aquaculture, or other, less fresh water-demanding activities; in this context, the proximity of aquaculture to and use of limited high-quality water resources gives a highly site-specific potential for minimizing environmental impact [4]. During the last decades, the use of plant resources of marine or coastal origin is gaining attention, but their use must be sustained on detailed studies, to face the freshwater scarcity and the lack of food [5,6]. Northwest México is an arid region where freshwater availability for agriculture is drastically decreasing, but on the other hand, it has a long coast sustaining a diversity of biota; the Mexican coastal ecosystems are located in the tropical and subtropical zones between 30 • N 116 • W and 15 • N 90 • W, with mild temperatures only on the north, neighboring with the USA border [7].…”

Assessing Salicornia europaea Tolerance to Salinity at Seed Germination Stage

“…Halophytes are naturally evolved salt-tolerant plants that represent almost 2% of terrestrial species [4]. Halophytes are currently being studied for wider commercial applications, including as a source of food and forage, but also aromatic, cosmetic, and nutraceutical compounds for human uses [5]. Salicornia is a halophyte genus belonging to the Amaranthaceae family.…”