α-tocopherol and fatty acids of Spirulina platensis biomass in glass panel bioreactor

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of temperature, at 26°C, on growth, α-tocopherols and fatty acid composition of S. platensis, grown in laboratory batch cultures with glass panel bioreactor. α-tocopherol among of S. platensis was 63.48±10.73 μg g -1 in the dried samples. The cell density of S. platensis increased rapidly to 32.38±3.58×104 cells mL-1 and the maximum specific growth rate was 0.36 day-1. The percentage of total SFA, total MUFAs and total PUFAs of dry weight were 70.3, 1.9 and 18.6%, respectively. The predominant fatty acids were by order of abundance: palmitic acid (16:0), palmitoleic acid (16:1(n-7)), oleic acid (18:1 (n-9)), linoleic acid (18:2(n-6) and γ-linoleic acid (18:3(n-6)). Among the PUFAs, 18:3 (n-6) was the major fatty acids reaching 18.5±0.7% of total fatty acids followed by 18:2 (n-6) (13.8±0.5%). The concentrations of γ-linolenic acid varied from 12-20% for S. platensis, at the optimum growth temperatures and it was concluded that the temperature did not affect γ-linolenic acid. Finally, the major goal of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of the supplementation procedure together with low growth temperatures on improving the γ-linoleic acid level and α-tocopherol in S. platensis. © 2006 Asian Network for Scientific Information.