FISHERIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE,MOA,TAIWAN

Three strains of green microalgae from the Jing-Zai-Jiao salt pans situated at Beumen in Tainan, Taiwan, were isolated, purified, and marked as RD, GD, and BT. Investigation through optical microscopy at the cellular level and through phylogenetic analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region rDNA sequences of Dunliella and Tetraselmis indicated that the BT strain was Tetraselmis marina (Cienkowski), the GD strain was Dunaliella viridis (Téodoresco) and the RD strain was Dunaliella salina (Téodoresco). Nutritional analysis revealed that the crude protein contents of RD, GD and BT were 38.8%, 39.4% and 27.5%, respectively, while their crude lipid contents were 14.4%, 15.2% and 3.4%, respectively. The results indicated that the RD and GD provided significantly higher amounts of crude protein and crude lipid content to fry for rapid growth than the BT did. By extraction, the dry weight yield of β-carotene in the RD was found to be 11 %, while its fatty acid composition was 10.1 % oleic acid (18:1n-9), 10.9% α-linolenic acid (18:3n-3), 5.5% linoleic acid (18:2n-6) and 1.1% γ-linolenic acid (18:3n-6).