Nature has bestowed Pakistan with plentiful resources including algae, which are being utilised for the extraction of metals, phycocolloids, oil, cholesterol free protein and fertilisers. Algae have attracted pharmaceutical and synthesis industries for their commercial exploitation. These organisms include essential fatty acids (EFAs) such as linoleic, arachidonic, linolenic, -linolenic acids etc. that must be in diet for healthy growth. These acids cannot be synthesized fast enough by body to meet needs. Present research work aimed at isolation and characterisation of saturated and...

For a country it is of great advantage to have a coastline since it serves a gateway to the worldwide oceans. Nature has not bestowed this advantage on all countries of the world but has endowed the coastal areas of Pakistan with abundant of marine resources. Seaweeds, being benthic, are primary producer of coastal ecosystem. They are inhabitants of the neritic zone in the marine hydrosphere, as majority of herbivores feed on them. They may serve as good source of food to mankind, animals and also as natural fertilizer for farm and agricultural land. Seaweeds have been used for...

Algae are heterogeneous, polyphyletic assemblage of very simple, water loving, autotrophic organism having no sterile layer of jacket-cells around their reproductive organs and lacking true embryogenesis. As primary producers, they are an important component of aquatic ecosystem, being inhabitants of moist, freshwater, brackish water and marine environments of our biotope. Right up from the very beginning several phycologists have made their life long efforts to study taxonomy of the members of Volvophycota all over the world. But no such attempt was ever made to make a detailed taxonomic...

The knowledge about algal chemistry is gradually becoming more significant. Recently a new term, phycochemistry has been proposed by Shameel (1990). Phycochemistry is the study of natural products and chemical constituents occurring in algae, from a biological point of view. As a new branch of phycology it has emerged as a result of huge and amassed knowledge about secondary metabolites occurring in algal phyla (divisions). It distinguishes itself very clearly from phytochemistry in general on one hand and algal biochemistry on the other. It differs from the main objectives of algal...