Research Progress on Nutritional Activity and Processing Utilization of Kappaphycus alvarezii

In recent decades, the research on seaweed has received great attention from people around the world. Kappaphycus alvarezii has the value of both medicine and food. It is an important tropical marine biological resource. This paper reviews and summarizes the research progress of the comprehensive utilization of the resources of Kappaphycus alvarezii from three aspects: Nutritional value, active function, processing and utilization. In the aspect of nutritional value, the effects of geographical region, drying method and seasonal variation on the nutritional components and the effects of drying method on the active components were analyzed. For the active function, the antioxidative and anti-free radical effects, anti-tumor and antiviral effects, as well as the hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects were summarized. As for the processing and utilization of Kappaphycus alvarezii, this paper introduces the three aspects of the algae itself, the important active ingredient kappa carrageenan and the waste after industrial extraction of kappa carrageenan. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reference for the research and development of the algae, and to promote the effective utilization of the algae resources.