Effect of inorganic micronutrients on growth of Arthrospira (Spirulina) maxima

Abstract

Underground seawater sampled from Jeju, Korea (so called Jeju magma seawater, JMS) has high amount of inorganic micronutrients as much as 10 times comparison to its amount of natural seawater. Especially, JMS contains high amount of zinc (Z, 0.019 mg/L), iron (F, 0.015 mg/L), manganese (M, 0.008 mg/L), vanadium (V, 0.015 mg/L), selenium (S, 0.013 mg/L) and germanium (G, 0.002 mg/L). Inorganic micronutrients are the essential elements for the photosynthetic metabolism and growth of marine algae. However, there is no information about relation between the micronutrients of JMS and marine algae, just fewer studies of plant cultivations using JMS have been conducted. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the micronutrients on growth of blue-green alga, Spirulina maxima in the modified medium using different ratio of inorganic components in JMS. Screening experiment for the growth rate of S. maxima was accomplished using spectrophotometric measurement (λ=664 nm) with 64 modified SOT media of each micronutrient combinations. The 6 micronutrient components ratio of the culture media was made each concentration same as JMS under scale-up conditions. Eight modified media were then selected for comparison of biochemical differences and scale-up growth performance under 20 L culture condition for one month. In 10 mL scale culture at 14 days, growth rate of S. maxima in the medium containing mixed component