Preface

Carotenoids are colorful, natural, and versatile secondary metabolites that are widespread among living beings where they are involved in many biological roles reporting beneficial actions. During the last half-century, significant advances in carotenoids research have been made to improve knowledge about their composition, structure, and biological roles as well as to design more efficient processes for their production at a mid-large/large scale (involving new innovative approaches). Potential uses of carotenoids in different biotechnological fields like food science, biomedicine, and cosmetics are also being investigated.

Even so, there are certain limitations that make many of these carotenoid production processes inefficient and economically unprofitable. Examples of some of these limitations include the corrosion of bioreactors used to produce carotenoids at an industrial scale, for example, caused by certain conditions in highly ionic media; in other cases, the isolation of carotenoids from natural sources involves the use of organic reagents and solvents that are contaminants.

This book includes seven chapters addressing the role of carotenoids in certain diseases as well as in thermal adaptation in animals and plants. Chapters also explore new natural sources from which carotenoids showing high antioxidant capacities can be efficiently isolated and overproduced. Consequently, this book contributes to the dissemination of knowledge related to natural carotenoids characterization, their production at an industrial scale, and their potential uses in biomedicine among other fields. The examples collected herein are of interest not only to professionals and researchers in the field but also to students at the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.

The editor gratefully thanks all the authors as well as the staff at IntechOpen for their valuable contributions. This book is designed to be a valuable source of new information on the many and varied facets of carotenoids.

> **Rosa María Martínez-Espinosa** Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain
