Sustainable production of toxin free marine microalgae biomass as fish feed in large scale open system in the Qatari desert

Abstract

Mass cultivation of microalgae biomass for feed should be cost effective and toxin free. Evaporation loss in Qatar can be as high as 2 cm/d. Hence, production of marine microalgae biomass in Qatar would also require mitigating water loss as there was only very limited groundwater reserve. To address these issues, a combination of four growth conditions were applied to a 25,000 L raceway pond: locally isolated microalgae strain was selected which could grow in elevated salinity; strain that did not require silica and vitamins; volume of the culture would increase over time keeping denser inoculum in the beginning, and evaporation water loss would be balanced by adding seawater only. A local saline tolerant Nannochloropsis sp. was selected which did not require silica and vitamins. When the above conditions were combined in the pond, average areal biomass productivities reached 20.37 g/m2/d, and the culture was not contaminated by any toxic microalgae.