Abstract
Industrial vegetable oil production in Viet Nam depends on oil seeds and crude plant oils that are currently more than 90% imported. As the first step in investigating the feasibility of using microalgae to provide Viet Nam with a domestic source of oil for food and edible oil industries, fifty lipid-producing microalgae were isolated and characterized. The microalgae were isolated from water sources ranging from freshwater to brackish and marine waters from a wide geographic distribution in Viet Nam. Initial analyses showed that 20 of the 50 strains had good growth rates, produced high biomass and had high lipid content, ranging up to 50% of dry weight biomass. 18S rRNA gene sequence analyses of the 50 strains showed a great diversity in this assemblage of microalgae, comprising at least 38 species and representatives of 25 genera: Chlamydomonas, Poterioochromonas, Scenedesmus, Desmodesmus, Chlorella, Bracteacoccus, Monoraphidium, Selenastrum, Acutodesmus, Mychonastes, Ankistrodesmus, Kirchneriella, Raphidocelis, Dictyosphaerium, Coelastrella, Schizochlamydella, Oocystidium, Nannochloris, Auxenochlorella, Chlorosarcinopsis, Stichococcus, Picochlorum, Prasinoderma, Chlorococcum, and Marvania. Some of the species are closely related to well-known lipid producers such as Chlorella sorokiniana, but some other strains are not closely related to the strains found in public sequence databases and likely represent new species. Analysis of oil quality showed that fatty acid profiles of the microalgal strains were very diverse and strain-dependent. Fatty acids in the microalgal oils comprised saturated fatty acids (SFAs), poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs). The main SFA was palmitic acid. MUFAs and PUFAs were dominated by oleic acid, and linoleic and linolenic acids, respectively. Some strains were especially rich in the essential fatty acid α-linolenic acid (ALA), which comprised more than 20% of the fatty acids in these strains. Other strains had fatty acid compositions similar to that of palm oil. Several strains have been selected on the basis of their suitable fatty acid profiles and high lipid content for further chemical and physical characterization, toxicity and organoleptic tests of their oils, and for scale-up.
Highlights
Current oil consumption for food and cooking in Viet Nam is 8 to 9 kg/year per capita, which is lower than the 13.5 kg/year per capita world average, and much lower than the 40 kg/year per capita average in the USA and European countries
More than 60 microalgae strains naturally existing in the water samples were isolated, obtained in uni-algal culture, and screened by Nile Red staining to qualitatively evaluate lipid production
The isolation of microalgae that produce a high lipid content and high biomass is a prerequisite for the successful industrial production of edible oils
Summary
Current oil consumption for food and cooking in Viet Nam is 8 to 9 kg/year per capita, which is lower than the 13.5 kg/year per capita world average, and much lower than the 40 kg/year per capita average in the USA and European countries. Mar. Drugs 2017, 15, 194; doi:10.3390/md15070194 www.mdpi.com/journal/marinedrugs. Mar. Drugs 2017, 15, 194 consumption of 20–25 kg/year per capita. In Viet Nam, the demand for edible oils is rapidly increasing, with consumption projections of 16 kg/year per capita in 2020 and 18 kg/year per capita in 2025. Because of the high population in Viet Nam of 92.7 million in 2016, the overall consumption of edible oils in Viet Nam is high and the edible oil industry in Viet Nam depends on oil seeds and crude plant oils for more than 90% of domestic edible oil consumption [1,2], at a cost of several millions of USD
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