A new fixation method was developed for the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) study of natural phytoplankton samples collected in situ . To test NMR reliability, a Chlorella continuous culture was used in a phosphorus deficiency recovery experiment. The method was then applied to natural metalimnetic cyanobacterial plankton . The maximum Entropy Method was used to enhance the generally poor signal to noise ratio resulting from the low amount of available material and NMR sensitivity . Suggestions are made on how to improve reliability .

No abstract