Nostoc flagelliforme cells obtained from liquid culture were cultivated in sand and desert soil to investigate the ecological effects of N. flagelliforme in desert area. The result showed that the N. flagelliforme cells exhibited adaptability to draught similar to the wild N. flagelliforme trichome. The growth rate of N. flagelliforme cells on the sand is much faster than that of the trichome. Determinations of the water permeability and water retention showed that the N. flagelliforme cells can improve the soil quality. The result of soil surface crusting indicated that N. flagelliforme cells can adhere to the surface of the sand particles growing and forming the biological crust.

.In this study, the nutrient components of the wild and the liquid suspension cultured Nostoc flagelliforme were determined and compared by atomic absorption method, HPLC and so on. The results indicated that the contents of crude proteins, crude fat, β-carotenes, vitamin C and mineral elements in N. flagelliforme cells from the suspension culture were higher than those in wild ones. 17 kinds of amino acids have been measured and the data showed that the contents of 13 kinds of them in cultured cells were higher than those in wild ones except aspartic acid, valine, isoleucine and arginine. Antitumor effect of the extracellular polysaccharides indicated that the extracellular polysaccharides could inhibit the growth of cervical carcinoma Hela cells. Their inhibition rates are 32.22% and 37.32%, respectively. This investigation showed that the liquid suspension cultivated N. flagellifome can be a substitute for the wild algae to be used as functional food resource.

.The process for the desaltation of the polysaccharide from the mixotrophic liquid culture of Nostoc flagelliforme with radial flow chromatography (RFC) column packed with Sephadex G-100 gel was investigated. The RFC column having 7.7 cm of bed length and 229.6 cm3 of bed volume was used in this study. The effects of some operating factors such as the sampling weight, the flow rate of eluent on the desaltation efficiency were examined. It was found that the separation efficiency increases with the decrease of sampling weight and flow rate of eluent. With 2.4 mg of sampling weight and 0.3 ml/min of flow rate of eluent, the salt content of polysaccharide was lowered from 90.42% to 2.36%. As a conclusion, this technique can be used to get rid of the eluant in the polysaccharide introduced by the ion exchange process.