The project of four young people from Puglia has got under way: Italy's fourth spirulina farm is born, cultivating an alga with countless benefits for both people and the environment.
Spirulina is a blue-green alga that lives in saline lakes with alkaline, warm waters. Since antiquity it has been prized for its wealth of nutritional properties, and recently the FAO described it as the "food of the future" precisely because of the abundance and quality of its beneficial properties.
It is a complete food, with a good protein content, containing all the essential amino acids, and it provides potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, phosphorus, selenium, sodium and zinc, as well as B-group vitamins, vitamin A, C, D and vitamin E. The microalga also contains many pigments that are beneficial to the body, including beta-carotene and zeaxanthin, chlorophyll, xanthophyll and many others.
The merits of spirulina alga have been demonstrated by two separate studies (1, 2) carried out by Japanese scientists. These studies have scientifically confirmed the beneficial properties of spirulina alga. As well as being used in cases of asthenia, fatigue and convalescence, the alga makes the immune system more combative and resilient.
Raffaele Settanni, a chemical and biological laboratory technician, designer Danila Chiapperini, and biologists Flavia Milone and Simona Intini have established Italy's fourth spirulina alga farm in Valenzano, in the province of Bari. The four young people, members of the association Apulia Kundi — founded thanks to the 'Principi Attivi' call for proposals through which the Puglia Region funds the best innovative ideas in the area — fell in love with the alga's potential after a trip to Africa, where spirulina is used to combat malnutrition.
"We learned in Malawi, the warm heart of Africa, that there exists an alga of the future: spirulina, with its curious name but extraordinary properties; a form of knowledge as ancient as it is innovative for our country. It has been shown that no food of plant origin has such a high concentration of nutritional properties: spirulina is the natural food with the highest protein content.
By overturning the classic logic of exporting the Western cultural model and combining ancient knowledge with contemporary needs, through ApuliaKundi we intend today to promote communication and cultural and environmental awareness, fostering the development of conscious consumers in their choice of a healthy diet and their own ecological footprint. In our case, the innovation lies in enhancing ancient knowledge," Danila Chiapperini explained to Bari Today.
The project also aims to go beyond the nutraceutical merits of spirulina, since the alga lends itself to a great many uses other than as a food, ranging from cosmetics to the production of energy from biomass, through to the composition of bioplastics and biodiesel.
The product will be organic and in raw form and, the working group reports, "it will not be sold in tablet form, through processes that require the use of chemical thickeners, but as pure as possible: we will dry the alga and sell it," Settanni explained.