The project title is: Human nutrition, animal and fish feeding on microalgae derived products through sustainable photosynthetic autotrophic cultures. The acronym of the project is SUNFEEDING and the project code is Τ2ΕΔΚ-02279. More Information.

Microalgae have the potential to become a novel source of bioactive molecules, especially for those who might wish to enhance the nutritional and functional quality of either human or animal food. Microalgae have been around “forever” but only in the last few decades have been produced and marketed as nutraceuticals and food supplements. Their potential is so much greater than the current applications. Μicroalgae provide an important direct or indirect feed source for early developmental stages of many farmed fish and animals. The current global drive to produce biofuels from algae offers a key opportunity to shift existing biomass supply and cost structures in favour of animal feeds, within an integrated biorefinery. The biorefinery concept though involves achieving higher productivities and better recoveries of the produced biomass. This alone constitutes a great challenge to engineers. The challenges however are not only for engineers, food scientists have their own hurdles to overcome when it comes to the use of microalgae as food or as a source of ingredients for foods. The project SUN-FEEDING, in complete conformity with all the above questionings and challenges aspires to underpin the technological possibilities of microalgae, as an untapped resource waiting to be exploited in the food science and technology arena.

There are 8 partners in this project, 5 of them being research institutes or universities and 3 of them private owned companies. Elin Verd is active in the field of green energy and products.

It can be said that sustainable growth is the term that more precisely express Elin Verd’s vision and main activities. Considering the above, Elin Verd participates in that project and the main responsibilities of it are the production at large scale of the microalgae quantities needed for conducting the animal/fish feeding and energy exploitation experiments. In addition, it will contribute to the techno-economical assessment of the proposed technology and the overall assessment of the project for future exploitation of the technology.