Variation in the proximate composition of edible marine macroalga Ulva rigida collected from different coastal zones of India

Several species of cosmopolitan marine macroalgal genus Ulva (Chlorophyta) are economically important due to high growth, carbohydrate, protein and lipid content. Nevertheless, analysis pertaining these traits of any species has by no means been explicitly investigated. We herein investigated 109 samples of U. rigida from fifteen locations of Indian coast for carbohydrate, protein and lipid content suitable for further development of scaled-up production. The carbohydrate, protein and lipid content ranged from 16.63 ± 1.07 to 65.93 ± 0.49% dry weight, 4.14 ± 0.45 to 26.0 ± 1.43% dry weight and 0.8 ± 0.08 to 3.1 ± 0.04% dry weight respectively. Principal component analysis provides an interpretable overview of main information enclosed in a multidimensional data set satisfactorily explained 72.1% of the total variability in the present data, with principal component 1 accounting for 38.7% and principal component 2 for 33.4% of the total variation. The study confirmed that the strain collected from Gopnath, Gujarat possesses high potential for industrial exploitation due to its high carbohydrate level. Growing this alga on large-scale might pave ways for socio-economic development of coastal populace.