Utilization of spirulina as functional food: Phytosterol and amino acid profiles study

Abstract

The potential of microalgae Spirulina sp. biomass as a raw material food is very large. Spirulina sp. is believed to promote health effects in human being. This study was aimed to assess the phytosterol content and amino acid profile of microalgae. Microalgae has been targeted because of several advantages, namely high area productivity, relative ease to cultivate, lack of need to compete with food products in terms of fertile areas, ability to adapt to environmental changes by generating secondary metabolites that are useful, and possibility to be used to refine and take nutritive from effluent. Spirulina sp. was collected from Yogyakarta, Indonesia and was tested for proximate content, B-sitosterol and stigmasterol content and amino acid profile. Spirulina sp. can be considered as a source of functional amino acid (FAA) in human nutrition as they are rich in glutamic acid (75,320.79 ppm), Leusin (58,568.49 ppm) and aspartic acid (43,830.78 ppm). Saponification fraction of Spirulina sp. contain 5.39+2.29 % B-sitosterol and 7.61+2.01 stigmasterol.