Abstract
Simple SummaryMicroalgae are increasingly recognized as a source of valuable biomass with numerous health benefits. Cleaning of marine microalgal biomass is very crucial for microalgal studies as the salt on the microalgae cells will lead to overestimation of biomass determination. Incomplete washing of salt from microalgae could also interfere with the nutritional analyses. The biomass, especially dry weight, has been utilized for nutritional or compositional evaluation. Although standard methods of marine microalgal dry weight determination are available, these methods did not provide comprehensive details, and the parameters vary among themselves. Without a standard method, a comparison of results among previous studies can be misleading and unreliable. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate and determine the ideal setting of several parameters in the marine microalgal dry weight determination for laboratory-scale culture. The present findings could assist in developing a standardized protocol to ensure a high quality of biomass for microalgal studies. Microalgal biomass is one of the crucial criteria in microalgal studies. Many reported methods, even the well-established protocol on microalgal dry weight (DW) determination, vary greatly, and reliable comparative assessment amongst published results could be problematic. This study aimed to determine the best condition of critical parameters in marine microalgal DW determination for laboratory-scale culture using four different marine microalgal species. These parameters included the washing process, grades of glass microfiber filter (GMF), GMF pretreatment conditions, washing agent (ammonium formate) concentrations, culture: washing agent ratios (v:v) and washing cycles. GMF grade GF/A with precombustion at 450 °C provided the most satisfactory DW and the highest ash-free dry weight (AFDW)/DW ratio. Furthermore, 0.05 M ammonium formate with 1:2 culture: washing agent ratio and a minimum of two washing cycles appeared to be the best settings of microalgal DW determination. The present treatment increased the AFDW/DW ratio of the four respective microalgae by a minimum of 19%. The findings of this study could serve as a pivotal reference in developing a standardized protocol of marine microalgal DW determination to obtain veracious and reliable marine microalgal DW.
Highlights
In recent years, microalgae have received considerable attention due to their versatile properties as fertilizer, animal feed, an alternative source of biodiesel feedstock, and human food [1,2,3,4,5]
The glass microfiber filter (GMF) grade GF/A showed at least 14% higher ash-free dry weight (AFDW)/dry weight (DW) ratios for all microalgae compared to GF/C and GF/F
Microalgal biomass is an important indicator of growth, productivity, and expression of particular cell components
Summary
Microalgae have received considerable attention due to their versatile properties as fertilizer, animal feed, an alternative source of biodiesel feedstock, and human food [1,2,3,4,5]. Microalgal biomass is inarguably one of the main criteria in studying microalgae. Marine microalgae require additional cleaning procedures in order to obtain precise dry weight (DW). This is because the salt absorbed on the microalgal cell surface or present in the intercellular water could lead to overestimation of the DW [6,7]. Zhu and Lee [6] studied four different washing agents on marine microalgae and recommended either ammonium formate or ammonium bicarbonate to obtain accurate DW values. Two different approaches frequently utilized for microalgal biomass studies are DW [10,11] and ash-free dry weight (AFDW) [12]. DW serves as an important parameter in estimating biomass concentration, productivity and percentages of cell component [6]
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