Development of Seaweed Based Value Added Products: Nutritional, Functional and Shelflife Properties

Seaweed (Ulva lactuca Spp.) is an edible marine alga. Due to its high nutrient content, seaweed was incorporated in many forms like powder and extract aiming to find out the best formulation for the production of seaweed-based cookies and beverages with better nutritional quality, consumer acceptability and shelf life of the seaweed-based products. Seaweed cookies and beverages were prepared by using the formulated seaweed mixtures by incorporating dry fine powdered for seaweed cookies preparation and seaweed extract for preparation of beverages and raw juices at different proportions with respective percentage of other raw ingredients. The developed seaweed cookies and beverages were subjected to sensory evaluation by an expert panel for the attributes, appearance, colour, aroma, texture, taste, flavour and overall acceptability using nine-point hedonic scales. The statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the results in order to determine their significance level at P< 0.05. The findings showed that the prepared seaweed products differed significantly (P< 0.05) in terms of moisture, protein, fiber, ash, carbohydrate etc. The shelf life of the developed seaweed-based products was observed during storage period.