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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Investigating the impact of light quality on macromolecular of Chaetoceros muelleri

Kenji Iwasaki A , Milán Szabó https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6235-2894 A B * , Bojan Tamburic https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5720-9380 C , Christian Evenhuis A , Alonso Zavafer https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8905-1618 A D , Unnikrishnan Kuzhiumparambil A and Peter Ralph A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Climate Change Cluster (C3), Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, NSW, Australia.

B Institute of Plant Biology, Biological Research Centre, Hungary, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH), Szeged, Hungary.

C Water Research Centre, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

D Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

* Correspondence to: szabo.milan@brc.hu

Handling Editor: Keach Murakami

Functional Plant Biology - https://doi.org/10.1071/FP21131
Submitted: 29 April 2021  Accepted: 2 September 2021   Published online: 12 October 2021

© 2021 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

Diatoms (Bacillariophyceae) are important to primary productivity of aquatic ecosystems. This algal group is also a valuable source of high value compounds that are utilised as aquaculture feed. The productivity of diatoms is strongly driven by light and CO2 availability, and macro- and micronutrient concentrations. The light dependency of biomass productivity and metabolite composition is well researched in diatoms, but information on the impact of light quality, particularly the productivity return on energy invested when using different monochromatic light sources, remains scarce. In this work, the productivity return on energy invested of improving growth rate, photosynthetic activity, and metabolite productivity of the diatom Chaetoceros muelleri under defined wavelengths (blue, red, and green) as well as while light is analysed. By adjusting the different light qualities to equal photosynthetically utilisable radiation, it was found that the growth rate and photosynthetic oxygen evolution was unchanged under white, blue, and green light, but it was lower under red light. Blue light improved the productivity return on energy invested for biomass, total protein, total lipid, total carbohydrate, and in fatty acids production, which would suggest that blue light should be used for aquaculture feed production.

Keywords: aquatic ecosystems, blue light, Chaetoceros muelleri, diatom, diatoms, metabolic profile, microalgae, photobioreactors, photosynthetic efficiency.


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