Selenium: Prospects of Functional Food Production with High Antioxidant Activity

The essentiality of selenium for mammals including human beings, its powerful antioxidant properties, and synergism with other natural antioxidants elicit inten sive investigations in agricultural and medicinal crop products with high levels of selenium, phenolics, and other antioxidants. The present chapter demonstrates the most interesting results of such studies revealing high possibilities of selenium biofortification, increase in soil selenium bioavailability via arbuscular mycorrhi zal fungi (AMF) and Se-dependent bacteria application, and discovery of new medicinal plants – Se accumulators with high antioxidant activity. Moreover, special attention has been paid to the production of functional food with artifi cially high selenium and antioxidant content: sprouts and microgreens fortified with selenium, medicinal mushrooms.