A review: Application of allelochemicals in water ecological restoration——algal inhibition

Problems caused by harmful algal blooms have attracted worldwide attention due to their severe harm to aquatic ecosystems, prompting researchers to study applicable measures to inhibit the growth of algae. Allelochemicals, as secondary metabolites secreted by plants, have excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, obvious algal inhibiting effect and little ecological harm, and have promising application prospect in the field of water ecological restoration. This review summarized the research progress of allelochemicals, including (i) definition, development, and classification, (ii) influencing factors and mechanism of algal inhibition, (iii) the preparation methods of algal inhibitors based on allelochemicals. The future research directions of allelochemicals sustained-released microspheres (SRMs) were also prospected. In the future, it is urgent to explore more efficient allelochemicals, to study the regulation mechanism of allelochemicals in natural water bodies, and to improve the preparation method of allelopathic algal suppressant. This paper proposed a feasible direction for the development of allelochemicals SRMs which exhibited certain guiding significance for their application in water ecological restoration. [Display omitted] •Research progress of allelochemicals in recent years was reviewed.•The algal inhibiting mechanism of ASRMs was systematically summarized.•The preparation methods of ASRMs were summarized.•The application prospect of allelochemicals were proposed. This paper summarized the research progress of allelochemicals and its sustained-release microspheres, and proposed a feasible development direction of them in water ecological restoration.