Increase in biomass and growth of Dunaliella microalga under vanillin treatment

One of the important goals of plant physiology in water ecosystems, is biomass and growth increment of green microalgae which led to access to their valuable production. In this regard, many factors are able to influence the increment and decrement of algal biomass. In this research different levels of vanillin (C8H8O3), as 0 (control), 10, 25, 40, 50, 70, 90 and 100 mg. L-1, were investigated during 24 days on cell number, fresh weight, dry weight and some of physiological indices (such as total sugar, reducing sugars, protein and photosynthetic pigments) in two algae, D. badawil-UTEX2538 and D. salina-UTEX200. All experiments were performed as completely randomized design (CRD) in three replications. The highest number of cells was observed at 25, 40 and 50 mg. L-1 vanillin treatments. In D. bardawil, maximum specific growth rate (SGR) and minimum doubling time (DT) of cells were observed at 50 mg. L-1 and in D. salina those were observed at 25 and 40 mg. L-1. Fresh weight, dry weight and total sugar were increased by the most of treatments, but protein and reducing sugars were decreased compared to control. Chl a, total Chl and total carotenoid were increased only in D. bardawil, but Chl b and beta carotene showed decrements. D. salina had a higher growth rate but lower content of protein, total sugar and reducing sugars than D. bardawil. Overall, in contrast to some of the previous researches, vanillin which has phenolic nature induced faster growth rate and cell division in algal suspensions and also in the most of the cases, it led to improvement of physiological indices.