Evaluation of the influence of different culture media on the growth of Arthrospira platensis

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Abstract

Spirulina cyanobacterium (Arthrospira platensis) is cultured due to its high market value. This is the case, due to its protein content, which is roughly 40 to 70 %, it has all the essential amino acids, minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and pigments (phycocyanin and carotenoid). It has been thoroughly researched given its nutritional potential antioxidant properties and it is integration in obesity treatments. The development process to obtain Spirulina powder has a fermentation stage, in which it is necessary to

evaluate different culture media in order to determine which one achieves the highest biomass values. There was a conducted study for each culture protocol Spirel, OFFER, Shlösser and BG11 and its individual results were evaluated. This fermentation took place in a 250 mL Erlenmeryer flask, containing 200 mL of the culture medium and 20 % of inoculum. The experiment was done three times at room temperature, with controlled agitation and lighting. The fermentation process lasted 10 days and was monitored with a spectrophometer (λ=560 nm), which gave place to creating the growing curve for each experiment. The maximum biomass production was obtained with Spirel (14,48 g/L) in the exponential growing phase, followed by OFFER medium (10,06 g/L), Shlösser (9,62 g/L) and lastly BG11 (6,33 g/L).