Cultivation of Spirulina using Low-Cost Organic Medium and Preparation of Phycocyanin Based Ice Creams

Abstract

Spirulina platensis is a filamentous Cyanobacterium with a high content of protein and essential vitamins that are commercially produced for feed and food supplementation. The present study was carried out to utilize the fermented oil cake filtrate as organic nutrient supplementation for Spirulina platensis cultivation. Commonly,the cultivation of S.platensis is done with conventional Zarrouk media that requires a high quality of NaHCO3. To reduce the cost of the medium different concentration of baking soda, sea salt, along with fermented oil cake filtrate were used as media for the cultivation of Spirulina platensis. Since there is a greater demand for organically grown Spirulina this study was undertaken. The main objective of this work is to cultivate Arthrospira S. platensis in edible oil cake incorporated medium. Higher biomass and pigment production concentration were scaled up to form labeled photobioreactor to outdoor trough cultivation. The nutritional content of the organic media was supplemented with the oil cake filtrate. The oil cake filtrate having a rich amount of nitrogen and phosphates will enhance the growth of Spirulina. In the present study, the Spirulina growth performance was recorded in both traditional and organic media of these the latter recorded better results. The phycocyanin of food-grade purity was incorporated in ice cream from organically cultivated biomass with food- grade and its sensory evaluations were done.