Biodiversity of Three Iranian Dunaliella Isolates and Their Potential for Biotechnological Applications

Iran has various habitats in lakes and wetlands for microalgae Dunaliella. There are limited researches on the physiological behavior of Iranian Dunaliella in different environments including light intensity and salt concentration.

The experiment was done based on completely randomized design with three replications and three factorials including two light levels (25 and 500 µmol photon m-2s-1), three salinity levels (2, 3 and 4 M NaCl) and three isolates (SH1, M1, G28) and CCAP19/18 strain.The isolates SH1, M1 and G28 were selected from Urmia Lake, Maharloo Lake and Gavkhoni wetlands, respectively. A non-native and standard strain, CCAP19/18, was used to compare the behavior of the native isolates.

The results showed that microalgae physiological behavior affected not only by environmental factors but also by genetic characteristics and the metabolic potential of microalgae. Under 25 µmol photon m-2s-1 and 3 M NaCl condition, Urmia isolate (SH1) had high cell number and chlorophyll content. However, Maharloo isolate (M1) was showed high carotenoids contents under above mentioned condition.

 The results are showing that: a) isolate with Urmia lake origin (SH1) has good potential for high growth and reproduction and it is the proper candidate for high biomass production.With measuring traits such as growth and cell number, content and photosynthetic pigment ratios may suggest that b) isolates with Urmia (SH1) and Maharloo (M1) lakes origin are suitable for the extraction of chlorophyll and carotenoids and c) it seems reasonable to expect that the Maharloo isolate (M1) is proper for photosynthetic studies.