Co-cultivation and stepwise cultivation of Chaetoceros muelleri and Amphora sp. for fucoxanthin production under gradual salinity increase

Ishika, T., Laird, D.W., Bahri, P.A. and Moheimani, N.R. (2019) Co-cultivation and stepwise cultivation of Chaetoceros muelleri and Amphora sp. for fucoxanthin production under gradual salinity increase. Journal of Applied Phycology, 31 (3). pp. 1535-1544.

Abstract

In a seawater-based open pond microalgae cultivation system salinity will increase gradually over time due to evaporative loss. Continuous salinity increase would lead to non-optimal salinities which negatively affect the biomass and fucoxanthin productivity. To increase and maintain high overall biomass and fucoxanthin productivity, even in the non-optimal salinity zone, two cultivation methods for marine and halotolerant microalgae were carried out, co-cultivation and stepwise cultivation (sequential cultivation). Two fucoxanthin-producing diatoms, Chaetoceros muelleri (marine) and Amphora sp. (halotolerant), were cultivated at non-optimal salinities between 59 and 65‰. Stepwise cultivation showed approximately 63% higher total biomass and 47% higher fucoxanthin productivity than that of co-culture. The ability to reutilize culture media in the stepwise cultivation increases the sustainability of that method. The use of a stepwise culture regime, coupled with a regimen of gradually increasing salinity, provides the possibility of year round fucoxanthin production from microalgae.

Publication Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation:	Algae R&D Centre School of Engineering and Information Technology School of Veterinary and Life Sciences
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
Copyright:	© 2019 Springer Nature B.V.
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/43164

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