This reference highlights the significance of marine ecosystems, encompassing seaweed beds, seagrasses, coral reefs, mangroves, estuaries, and protected areas, as a remarkable gateway to overcoming healthcare challenges and unlocking a rich trove of bioactive compounds for drug discovery. One of the key highlights of this book is its exploration of the development of marine bio-drugs, a field that demands collaboration among scientists from both academic and industrial fronts. The editors also include a prospective review on marine environments, emphasizing the necessity for big data, collective knowledge sharing, financial support, and streamlined administrative processes, all of which contribute to enhancing innovation in the drug discovery process. Another feature includes reference lists that allow researchers to explore topics of interest in depth. With twelve comprehensive chapters, this book extensively covers marine ecosystem biodiversity, productivity, protected areas, and the intricate interplay of biotic and abiotic factors that shape these ecosystems. Readers will learn about important bioactive compounds within marine organisms and how to use this knowledge to outline a strategy for bio-drug discovery. The book caters to a diverse audience of researchers, students, ecologists, microbiologists, pharmacologists, and biotechnologists who are engaged in studying the dynamic components of marine environments. By providing the latest insights and strategies in the realm of bio-drug discovery from marine resources, this book serves as an invaluable resource for scholars and professionals seeking to tap into the potential of these unique ecosystems.

This book collates traditional and modern applications of remote sensing in aquatic ecosystem monitoring. It covers conventional assessment methods like sampling, surveying, macroinvertebrates, and chlorophyll estimation for aquatic ecosystem health assessment. Advanced remote sensing technology provides timely spectral information for quantitative and qualitative assessment of water quality, shoreline changes, coral bleaching, and vegetation monitoring. The book covers different types of aquatic ecosystems like wetlands, rivers, lakes, saline, and the brackish lake. It also: Reviews the latest applications of remote sensing in the monitoring and assessment of aquatic ecosystems Includes traditional methods like cartography, sampling, surveying, phytoplankton assessment, river interlinking, and chlorophyll estimation Discusses the application of multi-source data and machine learning in monitoring aquatic ecosystems Discusses aquatic ecosystem management, services, threats, and sustainability Explores challenges, opportunities, and prospects of future Earth observation applications for aquatic ecosystem monitoring The book discusses space-borne, airborne, and drone geospatial data. The parts broadly cover aquatic ecosystem monitoring, vegetation management, advanced modeling practices, and challenges. It is meant for scientists, professionals, and policymakers working in environmental sciences, remote sensing, and geology.

Part of the IFT Press series, this book reviews the myriad published information on bioactive components derived from marine foods, enabling researchers and product developers to select appropriate functional ingredients for new products. Chapters cover foods and food ingredients from both animal and plant marine sources, focusing on those which demonstrate biological properties and whose constituent compounds have been isolated and identified as potentially active. This book further addresses the biological activities of PUFAs (Polyunsaturated fatty acids), oils, phospholipids, proteins and peptides, fibres, carbohydrates, chitosans, vitamins and minerals, fucoxantin, polyphenols, phytosterols, taurine, amongst others. These components, found in a variety of marine-derived foods, have been demonstrated to have preventative properties with regard to hypertension, oxidative stress, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other human diseases. Extraction methods and analysis techniques are also addressed. Intended for food scientists, food technologists and food engineers in academia, industry and government, this book reviews the substantial quantity of current research in this fast-moving and commercially valuable sector of food and nutrition science.

Finding natural substances is worthwhile in food preservation. The principal motivation behind this edited volume, Antimicrobials for Sustainable Food Storage, is to collect and present widespread knowledge in the domain of sustainable food ingredients with antimicrobial properties. The book consists of two sections. The first section of this volume is about food ingredients as antimicrobials, and the second section discusses the recent advances in the applications of food ingredients. Interplay of various environmental factors favors the growth of different microorganisms during the food preservation process. Growth of undesirable microorganisms negatively influences the taste, smell, color, and texture of food. Therefore, sustainable food preservation is a challenging issue. Though several chemicals have emerged, inevitable health effects are commonly encountered by food preserve chemicals. Microbial products (nisin, enterocin, pentosin, sakacin, and pediocin) have immense importance in prolonging the shelf life of food substances by controlling food spoilage and pathogenic microbes. Yeasts and cyanobacteria are also potential candidates in the supply of food ingredients with significant antimicrobial properties. However, limited awareness of antimicrobials as food ingredients and the unavailability of a single source of the latest insights on such food ingredients in one place led to the motivation to produce this work. Key Features: Provides insights on natural antimicrobials in food preservation Underlines the importance of sustainable food packaging Offers knowledge on emerging trends in antimicrobial-based food storage Diverse applications are covered in different chapters. This book covers various antimicrobials as food preservatives, such as metabolites, natural products, essential oils, nanomaterials, L-arginine, polyphenols, phaeophyceae, and horchata. There are also chapters that focus on the applicability and prospective studies of essential oils, edible biofilms, biodegradable antimicrobials, and nanostructured lipid carriers in the food sector and the method for encapsulation of antimicrobials.

A trillion different microbial species have been evolving for some 3.5 billion years, producing ever more complex active secondary metabolites. The sea is a cauldron of a great diversity of useful and valuable compounds. This Special Issue focused on studies of marine microbe natural products for discovering compounds useful to humankind. Papers were collected that provide up-to-date information regarding the characterization of marine microbes’ metabolic diversity and the evaluation of the therapeutic potential of marine microbes’ metabolites. Most of the articles in this book deal with marine fungi, biological and chemical diversity, and their active metabolites. This may be a sign that marine fungi have been under studied to date and are perceived by many researchers as an important source of discovery in this field. A best practices guide for the isolation of marine fungi from different matrixes and their conservation is also presented. The comparison of the phylogenetic and metabolomic profiles of microalgae from different lineages provides novel insights into the potential of chemotaxonomy in marine phytoplankton, showing a good overlap of phylogenetic and chemotaxonomic signals.

The book entitled “Biodiversity of Marine Microbes” aims at highlighting the significance of marine microbes as primary producers, their contribution in complex ecological processes and their roles in biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functioning. The book includes five research papers covering the diversity and composition of marine microbial communities representing all three domains of life in various marine environments, including coastal eutrophic areas, ice waters, and lagoons. One paper examines the diversity and succession of bacterial and archaeal communities from coastal waters in mesocosm experiments. The combination of classical tools with novel technological advances implemented in the methods of the papers offered an opportunity to answer fundamental questions and shed light on the complex and diverse life of marine microbes.