Spirulina phenolic compounds: natural food additives with antimicrobial properties

Abstract

Food safety is a scientific discipline to ensure consumers’ safety and prevent food-related harms, hazards, or risks along the entire food supply chain. Although fish and seafood products are the best means for securing food and nutrition in a population, they are also highly perishable, being vulnerable to pathogenic bacteria and fungi. This review thus aimed to provide updated scientific information on the role of the phenolic compounds of Spirulina as food additives, and their antimicrobial activities in fish and seafood products, in a food safety context. Recent applications of Spirulina phenolic compounds showed good results in contaminated fish and seafood products. Different studies have concluded that Spirulina phenolic compounds such as polyphenols, C-phycocyanin, γ-linolenic acid, fatty acids, and the combination of lauric and palmitoleic acids have antimicrobial activity in eliminating and/or controlling the growth of pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Bacillus subtilis, and fungi such as Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger. Overall, Spirulina can be considered as an emerging natural food additive with antimicrobial activities against pathogenic fungi and bacteria.