Monitoring of growth and biochemical composition of Dunaliella salina and Dunaliella polymorpha in different photobioreactors

Abstract

In this study, the isolation of green algae were collected from two different stations of Aegean Sea and Seyfe Lake. The molecular identification of Dunaliella species using their 18S ribosomal DNA genes were sequenced and investigated with the BLAST program in the NCBI database. After the morphological and molecular identification, two different Dunaliella species were deposited in Ege University Microalgae Culture Collection. D. salina and D. polymorpha cells were firstly produce in both bubble column to monitor the growth profiles and then the species were cultivated in bubble column and stirred column photobioreactors (PBRs) under both high light intensity and different mixing conditions to investigate the total protein, carbohydrate, lipids and carotenoid concentrations. Moreover, this study aims to evaluate the production of β-carotene using two different PBRs. As a result of this study, D. salina in stirred PBR obtained the highest lipid (334.79 ±0.02 mg/L), total carotenoid (96.7 ±0.02 mg/L), and β-carotene content (21.18 ±0.03 µg/mL), while the maximum dry cell mass of 0.906 g/L was reached by D. polymorpha in bubble column PBR. The aim of this study was to investigate the nutritional values and β-carotene content of Dunaliella salina and D. polymorpha isolated from Turkey.