Emerging Bioresources with Nutraceutical and Pharmaceutical Prospects

​This book introduces some emerging functional foods that are natural resources with tremendous promise as nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals. The author considers biodiversity and bioprospecting as a response to food security issues, drug-resistance, nutrition-poor diets and other problems, exploring the prospects of several under-utilized nutrients and bioactive repositories. Readers will discover biochemical makeups, validated health benefits, explanations of underlying mechanisms, hurdles in the path of popularity and promotion strategies. Chapters explore particular plants, seeds and fruits including the strawberry guava, opuntia fruits, the Carissa genus, grape seeds, quinoa and the milk thistle (Silybum), amongst others. They are considered as food sources where possible and from the perspective of the roles they can play in complementary and alternative medicine, such as in wound healing, antimicrobial activity, gastroprotective activity in treatment of cancers and as natural antioxidant sources. This rich compilation holds plausible solutions to a range of current issues and it endorses the much-needed goal of sustainability in terms of diet and drugs. It paves the path for further research and development on hitherto obscure natural resources. Scientists working in the area of food development, phytochemical and antioxidant analysis, bioprospecting of low-profile foods and in complementary and alternative medicine will find this work particularly valuable. It will also be of interest to the general reader with an interest in food science, food security, phytochemicals and functional food studies.

Dr. Seem Patel is currently a researcher at the Center of bioinformatics and medical informatics at San Diego State University, USA. She has earned her doctorate from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India by conducting research on food and pharmaceutical-grade polysaccharide production from natural isolates of lactic acid bacteria. Also, she had held position as an Assistant Professor in biotechnology at Lovely Professional University, India. She has published about 35 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and a book chapter. She serves as reviewer for about 30 international journals. Though she has a microbiology background and is presently involved in bioinformatics research, she is interested in nutraceutical development. This is her maiden endeavour in writing an entire book and she seeks constructive suggestions from experts in this area as well as general readers.