A green diet: thanks to Czech scientists, more microalgae species to appear on the market

Microalgae herald hope for the future – with prospects in industry, medicine, and quality food. Its ranks have now been joined by additional types of Chlorella microalgae, whose consumption has been greenlighted by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic after consulting all the countries of the EU. The agencies based their decision on the results of long-term research by the Institute of Microbiology of the CAS.

In the European Union, all new foods and food ingredients are subject to relatively strict regulations and must undergo a long procedure to be approved. This applies to insect proteins, plant extracts, or microscopic algae that appear in food supplements or in the form of oils, for example.

However, if it can be proven that the particular food was consumed by people in Europe before 1997, officials can recognise it without the lengthy approval procedure and all sorts of testing. This was the case of several types of Chlorella which people in Czechoslovakia were already eating forty years ago. Which specific species these were was determined with the help of scientists from the Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who have long been involved in both research and the practical application of Chlorella.

 “The Institute of Microbiology has historically cultivated various species of Chlorella that were not on the list of ‘old’ foods until now. But because the institute’s collection contains these types of algae, it was thus possible to prove that they had been used and consumed before 1997”, says Richard Lhotský from the Institute of Microbiology of the CAS.

Algae producers in EU countries can now use species that are on the list of so-called ‘old’ foods (i.e., not classified as novel foods) without the necessity of having them approved as novel foods in a long and costly process.

Chlorella biomass – cultivated outdoors (left), grown and cultivated in a fermentor (right)

Tiny green ball
“I will now describe the algae in such a way that everyone will be able to recognise it”, wrote Dutch botanist and microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck in 1890 when he first identified the microscopic Chlorella algae. Since then, this algae has been used as the model organism for photosynthesis research and, since the 1950s, researchers have been cultivating it for use in the food industry.

Czechoslovakia became the fifth country after the USA, Israel, Germany, and Japan which began to cultivate and consume Chlorella. For instance, the Palcát Hotel in Tábor was renowned for its algae patties. At the time, scientists from the Institute of Microbiology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Třeboň were also involved in the development of algae-based medicine and specimens of Chlorella from Třeboň even flew into space alongside astronaut Vladimír Remek.

Most people know Chlorella in the form of dietary supplements and/or pills. Although they usually have no idea which specific type of microalgae the green powder conceals, for producers, this information is crucial. The Chlorella family includes about one-hundred species which are constantly being renamed, making it difficult for companies that cultivate Chlorella to know which species are permitted and which are not. There are still several technologically significant species that had the misfortune of not having their name appear among those consumed before 1997.

Most Chlorella strains are now grown in open cultivation systems in Asia, while in Europe, due to climatic conditions, closed fermentation is becoming more widespread, which allows for new, cultivated non-green species of Chlorella to come to the forefront of research regarding gluten-free products as a source of protein and antioxidants.

We also wrote about the research and potential of algae in our Czech-language magazine A / Věda a výzkum 2/2021.

Text: Eliška Zvolánková, Zuzana Šprinclová, Division of External Relations of the CAS
Photos: Institute of Microbiology of the CAS, Shutterstock 
 Texts and photographs labelled (CC) are released for use under the Creative Commons license.

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