Algae Species of Industrial, Environmental, and Food Importance

Exploring nonconventional alternatives for food, feed, and environmental sustainability has become essential. Among several nontraditional resources, microalgae and cyanobacteria have come forward for their diverse and sustainable applications. However, selecting elite strains followed by optimizing their pilot-scale cultivation for industrial application faces a number of challenges. This chapter explores previously explored elite microalgal strains for diverse applications including environmental remediation, feed/food, and biofuel production. It has been found that algae species including Spirulina platensis, Chlorella vulgaris, Scenedesmus sp., Dunaliella salina, Haematococcus pluvialis, Tolypothrix distorta, Scytonema hyalinum, Nostoc commune, Nostoc, Anabaena spp., Synechococcus spp., Synechocystis spp., Oscillatoria spp., and Phormidium spp. have come forward as the most promising species for industrial, environmental, and food/feed applications. However, most of the algal species are still unexplored, which could be one of the priority research areas in the future. Different optimization approaches to increase the bioactive compounds from different microalgal strains are also described. Some challenges and prospects of microalgal products are also discussed.