Emily Radican, Yangchao Luo, Zhenlei Xiao
The global population faces increasing demands for sustainable initiatives due to industrialized agriculture. To meet the demand for protein-rich foods, innovative practices must be implemented. Conventional agricultural systems face significant challenges, including soil degradation, biodiversity loss, nutrient depletion, air pollution, and degraded water quality. Additionally, conventional agriculture affects the environment due to unsustainable farming practices utilizing chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. These practices contribute to the accumulation of greenhouse gases and carbon emissions, which negatively affect air and water quality. Agricultural yield is declining, reducing the availability of foods, and further increasing food insecurity through increased costs. Microalgae, a unicellular organism with adaptive capabilities for carbon sequestration, offers a beneficial shift from conventional agriculture. Microalgae provide low-impact environmental alternatives to the agricultural sector, promote energy conservation, and synthesize health-promoting biomolecules, such as antioxidants, pigments, essential fatty acids, polysaccharides, and protein. This review evaluates the potentials of microalgal biomass for sustainable food applications, highlighting its role in strengthening microalgae as a biorefinery and alleviating the environmental and ecological burdens of traditional farming.