IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS THERE WAS STRONG WORLD EXPANSION OF EXPLOITATION MICROALGAE.

Instituto Tecnologico de Canarias, ITC, through the Department of Biotechnology, He has obtained a new patent for food use of microalgae. It is one of the first patents on the development of new food formats from the biomass obtained from intensive cultivation of microalgae.

This patent is developed under the project FAM, Applied funded by the National Research Program, and represents a new commitment to give back to one of its uses microalgae, not only traditional but with more development potential, which it is use in the large market for human consumption.

The head of the Department of Biotechnology, ITC, Héctor Mendoza, It notes that "the microalgae are already a raw material widely used in industry and paramedical increasingly on functional foods", but he says the new food industry "has in algae a promising source of new products yet to be explored, in which, the design of new food formats is a key element in its development ", and it is precisely in this field, in which the ITC occupies a strategic position forefront.

Obtaining new patent, according Mendoza, "Realizes the significance and value of centers such as ITC, in a region like the Islands, a poor technological fabric ", noting that the ITC, with just a 2% researchers Canary Islands, "Is responsible and holder 15% of patents registered in the overall public R + D + i Archipelago ", in such strategic sectors Islands for renewable energy, desalination of seawater, medical engineering, or biotechnology.

microalgae, although historically they have been used in human food, part of the diet of the Aztec population in the city Tenochtitlan, They left evidence as historians of the sixteenth century, commercial exploitation on a large scale, in human nutrition it is still very incipient.

This is due, at the head of the Department of Biotechnology of ITC review, to a large degree, "To the production and exploitation of microalgae it is still an expanding activity", stressing in this regard that "we have not ceased to be a mere collectors, It is the production or cultivation of microalgae recent development activity, with a character that assimilates most large industrial farms in the field of biotechnology to traditional agriculture ".

However, in the last five years there has been a strong global expansion of the exploitation of microalgae, essentially for the production of biofuels or its environmental use, and fixing greenhouse gas or waste water purification. In this sense, Héctor Mendoza notes that Canary "was a reference region in the development of this technology, It is the research groups in the Islands which have led cutting-edge new proposals for the exploitation of microalgae ".