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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Bioprocess Engineering
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1546801
Impact of Nutrient Deficiency and Harvesting Strategy on Biomass and Phycocyanin Production in Spirulina Cultures
Provisionally accepted- 1 Tunku Abdul Rahman University, Kampar, Perak, Malaysia
- 2 University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
- 3 Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- 4 Yuan Ze University, Zhongli District, Taiwan
Recent research has been focusing on issue related to contamination, nutrient availability and strain selection but there have been inefficient methods on harvesting research area. This study employed an integrated continuous cultivation and harvesting strategy for the biorefinery of Spirulina microalgae. The effect of nutrient-deficient, harvesting ratio and NaNO3 addition on biomass concentration, biomass productivity and phycocyanin accumulation of Spirulina were investigated. The lowest biomass productivity of 0.015 g/L/day was observed in Spirulina cultivated in NaNO3 deficient medium. 10% harvesting ratio showed a consistent range of harvested dry biomass weight (0.20 g to 0.22 g). By adding 2.50 g/L of NaNO3 resulted in a significant increase in C-phycocyanin (C-PC) and allophycocyanin (APC) concentration, from 34.37 to 68.35 mg/g and 27.08 to 33.23 mg/g, respectively. Biomass productivity of 1-L and 10-L batch culture was found to be 0.23 g/L/d and 0.21 g/L/d, respectively. Both 1-L and 10-L batch cultures showed a significant increase in phycocyanin accumulation due to the addition of 2.50 g/L of NaNO3. These findings highlight the feasibility of continuous cultivation and optimized harvesting for scalable biomass and phycocyanin production, offering valuable insights for industrial biorefineries seeking to enhance microalgae-based bioactive compound extraction.
Keywords: harvesting ratio, Spirulina, Phycocyanin, Scale-up, Harvesting strategy
Received: 17 Dec 2024; Accepted: 21 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lim, Show and Khoo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Pau Loke Show, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Kuan Shiong Khoo, Yuan Ze University, Zhongli District, 32003, Taiwan
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