MINERALS COMPOSITION OF MARINE MACRO ALGAE COLLECTED FROM OLAIKUDA, RAMESHWRAM, GULF OF MANNAR, SOUTHEAST COAST OF INDIA

Abstract: Minerals are essential for human body to regulate the metabolic processes but some elements are also toxic to human body. Seaweeds are taken as food items in different developed and developing countries. So, estimation of minerals composition of seaweeds including the trace metals is important to evaluate food safety. On the other hand, the industrial effluents with pollutant, including toxic heavy metals have adverse effects on the aquatic environment. Different costly conventional treatment technologies are applying for removal of heavy metals from the marine environment. These techniques are economically less beneficial and produce a huge load of toxic chemical sludge on the environment. So, remediation of heavy metals by marine macro algae is a novel eco-friendly alternative approach. The Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) has been applied to analyse elements such as (Ag, Cu, Co, Ni, Mn, Cr, Pb, Zn, Cd, Al, B, Fe, Mg and Na) of some seaweeds. The two separate standard methods of acid digestion were used to estimate the minerals composition. The aim of study is to evaluate the composition of minerals including heavy metal. From this study, it is concluded that in compare to other seaweeds species, heavy metals are present in high amount in Valoniopsis pachynema, so this species may be used as heavy metals remediator and is not safe to consider as edible. Accordingly, Codium tomentosum and Gracilaria opuntia contain high amount of aluminium, sodium and boron, so these species should also not be consider as edible.

Keywords: Seaweeds; elemental composition; heavy metals; Phycoremediation; Olaikuda.