Marine enzymes for food and animal feed: a systematic review of current applications and future perspectives

Significant transformations in current food and feed production are necessary to address challenges associated with future food and feed security driven by an increasing human population and adverse climate change impacts. Marine-derived enzymes may serve as effective tools to improve our production systems with their high catalytic efficiency, halophilicity, thermal, pressure, and pH stability. While several marine enzymes, particularly from fish and fish byproducts, have long been utilized in the food industry, enzymes from marine bacteria, the most abundant enzyme source, remain underutilized.

The use of marine enzymes in the animal feed sector appears to be limited, but the major existing usages are directed towards improving feed digestibility. As processing agents or additives, marine enzymes can improve the production process and enhance the quality, safety, and digestibility of food and animal feed resources, hence, valorizing them as future food and feeds. They can also play a crucial role in bioconverting industrial sidestreams into high-value functional food and feed ingredients that confer both nutritional and health benefits.

This systematic review provides an updated summary of the applications and benefits of marine enzymes in food and animal feed industries, highlighting their roles in improving food and feed production, enhancing quality and safety, and promoting the sustainable utilization of diverse industrial byproducts for food and feed-related purposes. This further suggests innovative strategies, such as the exploitation of genomic and structural information to improve characteristics and facilitate the mass production of marine enzymes.