Ulvan as A New Trend in Agriculture, Food Processing and Medicine

Abstract

In this work the researcher is looking for natural, new, safe, cheap and available compounds that can be used as antimicrobial and antioxidant in the medical and agricultural fields. A sulfated polysaccharide, Ulvan was extracted from Ulva lactuca and purified by cold or hot water-extraction and ethanol-precipitation with yield = 5:10% (w-w). Its appearance and touch like gel. Characterization of active groups of Ulvan was achieved by FT-IR spectroscopy, its content of sulfate = 3.998% (w-w) was determined by Ion Chromatography (IC), its molecular weight = 532.221 Kilo Daltons was determined by Gel permeation chromatography, its thermal stability was evaluated by DSC-TGA, its viscosity = 18 was determined by viscometer apparatus and its antimicrobial activity was studied against human, plant, animal, fish and poultry pathogens. Ulvan showed antioxidant activity with IC50 = 3.04 mg/ml. Its biological activity as an antioxidant and antimicrobial may be a good indication for the use of Ulvan against various pathogens as a preservative in food processing and cosmetics and as antioxidant and antimicrobial in medicine against human pathogen.

Safe Ulvan Silver Nanoparticles Composite Films for Active Food Packaging

“…From FTIR-ATR of bio-nanocomposite films and FT-IR of ulvan was indicated that Ag-NPs is a good electrophile and react with nucleophile oxygen of both hydroxyl, carboxyl and sulfate groups of ulvan. Finally, FTIR-ATR should indicate the interaction between sulfated polysaccharides ulvan and biosynthesized silver nanoparticles through the functional groups of ulvan and indicated also the success of bio-nanocomposite films formation (Moura et al, 2012); (Amin, 2020b). Films Appearance (Fig.…”

“…The yield of polysaccharide (%) was calculated by the following equation as described in (Amin, 2020b) and (Shalaby and Amin 2019):…”

“…Then zone diameters were measured as mentioned in (National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards, 1993b). Agar-based methods as disk diffusion can be good alternatives because they are simple and fast methods (Liebowitz et al, 2001;Matar et al, 2003) Table 2 as described in (Amin, 2019;Amin, 2020a;2020b).…”

“…Its yield was 5:10/100 g of dry weight of the alga, its sulfate content was 3.998% (Shalaby and Amin 2019) and the functional groups of ulvan were determined by FT-IR spectroscopy (Fig. 3a) (Amin, 2020b).…”

“…Oceans and seas are rich in algae which had been used as human food in many countries in the world especially in Asia and have a major role in the industry such as fertilizer, biofuels and pesticides (Yu-Qing et al, 2016) as animal feed (Abd El-Galil and Amin, 2017) in medicine as anti-tumor drugs (Amin et al, 2015) and in the food processing industry products such as fish balls, meatballs, nuggets, broad bean beans and cooked horse beans (Meshhal, 2018). U. lactuca is a green macro alga that is called green lavers or sea lettuce is characterized by many beneficial phytochemicals (Amin, 2019) and is also characterized by polysaccharides that show good anti-microbial and antioxidants activities (Amin, 2020b) Its polysaccharides have a unique chemical structure that can't be found in higher plants or other algae called ulvan and is used in medicine for fighting many diseases (Yu-Qing et al, 2016) such as against cancer (Amin and Abdelreheem, 2020), in the bio-control activity of many microbes (Rivas-Garcia et al, 2018) and is also used as prebiotic in food industry (Shalaby and Amin, 2019) and in food packaging ) Guidara et al, 2020). Biopolymers such as polysaccharide, ulvan, are biocompatible, biodegradable, non-toxic, highly stable and safe for use in the food packaging industry and delivery of nutraceutical products (Ahmed and Ali, 2020).…”