Fatty acid contents and profiles of 16 macroalgae collected from the Irish Coast at two seasons

Spatial, seasonal, and within-plant variation in total fatty acid content and composition in the brown seaweeds Dictyota bartayresii and Dictyopteris australis (Dictyotales, Phaeophyceae)

“…In our study, we did not detect a general seasonal pattern in the TFA content as Dictyota had its highest TFA content in summer when water temperature and light availability were at their annual maximum, while Dictyopteris had a higher TFA content in winter at the same sampling location when water temperature and light availability were at their annual minimum. Although the degree and direction of seasonal TFA contents can be species-specific (Schmid et al 2014), and environmental conditions have potentially opposing effects on individual species, it appears unlikely that water temperature and light are the main drivers for the observed seasonal variability as we also observed erratic monthly fluctuations in the TFA content of up to 40 % within a timeframe of relatively stable light intensity and water temperature (Online Resource 1; AIMS 2014).…”

“…Only a few other species, such as D. tenuissima (5 % dw) ) and S. macrodontum (5-8 % dw) (Gosch et al 2014), have a similar or higher TFA content, while the majority of seaweed species have a TFA content below 3 % dw (Gosch et al 2012;Schmid et al 2014). Both Dictyota and Dictyopteris had a fatty acid composition of 16-23 % PUFA(n-3) which is higher than most terrestrial oil crops (Dubois et al 2007) and comparable to some of the commercially utilized seaweeds such as the kelp Laminaria ochroleuca ( .…”

“…Despite high productivities in culture (Bolton et al 2009;Capo et al 1999;Magnusson et al 2014;Mata et al, The intensive land based production for the green seaweeds Derbesia tenuissima and Ulva ohnoi: biomass and bioproducts, in review) and an annual production of approximately 20 million tons per year , seaweed as a bioresource for valuable oils has been largely overlooked, mainly because of its presumably low content of fatty acids. However, in an expanding field of research, a range of oil-rich species (>10 % dry weight (dw)) with high total fatty acid (TFA) contents and high proportions of PUFA(n-3) have been identified and investigated in detail for their suitability as feedstock for oil-based bioproducts (Gosch et al 2012;Kumari et al 2013;Schmid et al 2014). Recent examples include the brown seaweed Spatoglossum macrodontum with a TFA content of up to 8 % dw of which 20 % are in the form of valuable PUFA(n-3) (Gosch et al 2014) and the green seaweed Derbesia tenuissima with a TFA of 5 % dw of which 40 % are PUFA(n-3) and a fatty acid productivity of 1.4 g dw m −2 day −1 .…”

“…Although it is possible that some of the spatial variability of fatty acids in a species is caused by genotypic differentiation (Robinson et al 2013), variation is generally linked to the environment, including changes in light (Hotimchenko 2002), salinity , and in particular nutrient availability (Gómez and Wiencke 1998;Gordillo et al 2001) and water temperature (Al-Hasan et al 1991;Floreto et al 1993). The degree and direction of seasonal variation in the content and composition of fatty acids are species-specific (Schmid et al 2014) and may also be related to plant size and the life history stages of individuals (Gerasimenko et al 2010;Honya et al 1994). In addition, the content and composition of fatty acids can also vary between different parts of the thallus within an individual (Gosch et al 2014;Khotimchenko and Kulikova 2000;Kulikova and Khotimchenko 2000) and are likely related to the morphological and functional differentiation of the thallus (Lawrence and McClintock 1988;Stengel and Dring 1998).…”

Short-term effects of increasing CO2, nitrate and temperature on three Mediterranean macroalgae: biochemical composition

“…Total FA content was determined by gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC/FID) after direct transmethylation of the freeze-dried biomass as described previously by Schmid et al (2014). For quantification, pentadecanoic acid 15:0 (99%, Alfa Aesar) was added as an internal standard.…”