Biomass and eicosapentaenoic acid production from Amphora sp. under different environmental and nutritional conditions

Abstract

Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) could be extracted from diatoms such as Amphora sp. present abundantly in the ecosystems. In view of the key environmental and nutritional factors governing the diatoms growth rate, culture conditions were optimized for the biomass yield, total lipid content, EPA yield, and fatty acid composition under two main cultivation regimes: photoautotrophic and heterotrophic. The fastest growth rate about 0.20 ± 0.02 g/L and the highest EPA yield about 9.19 ± 3.56 mg EPA/g biomass were obtained by adding 10 g/L glucose and sucrose, respectively. Under photoautotrophic culture conditions, Amphora sp. rendered higher EPA yield at 100 rpm and 16:8 light/dark cycle. Total fatty acids produced predominantly comprised of an approximate 40–70% of saturated fatty acids, followed by 10–27% of monounsaturated fatty acids and then 8–25% of polyunsaturated fatty acids. These findings were able to pave a way for huge‐scale microalgal biomass production in commercial EPA production.

Microalgal polyunsaturated fatty acids: Hotspots and production techniques

“…It suggests that research on PUFAs production is mostly concentrated in these algae. In general, diatoms can accumulate a large amount of long-chain PUFA in cells, but their biomass production rate is generally relatively low even when supplemented with organic carbon Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology frontiersin.org sources (Marella et al, 2021;Cheah et al, 2022). On the other hand, Cryptheccdinium cohnii and Schizochytrium have a high content of long-chain PUFAs such as DHA and EPA, as well as high biomass production rates.…”