Abstract

Thirty-eight unialgal non-heterocystous filamentous cyanobacteria were isolated from rice fields of Manipur, India; cultured as unialgal, deposited to the national repository of cyanobacteria and microalgae and obtained accession number. All these strains were screened and investigated for the production of total lipid and commercially viable fatty acids in culture condition. Equal amount of total lipid (3%) was produced by Limnothrix vacuolifera BTA05, Plectonema boryanum BTA16, Plectonema nostocorum BTA47, Lyngbya laxespiralis BTA85 and Lyngbya norgardhii BTA184 in exponential growth phase. The commercially viable fatty acids, namely; palmitic acid (C16:0), palmitoleic acid (C16:1), oleic acid (C18:1n9c), linoleic acid (C18:2n6c) and γ- linolenic acid (C18:3n6) were focused in present study. The investigation revealed that Plectonema notatum BTA88 yielded high content of palmitic acid (27.9%); Oscillatoria agardhii BTA170 in palmitoleic acid (8.90%); Lyngbya martensiana BTA640 in oleic acid (56.2%); Phormidium faveolarum BTA20 (11.8%) in linoleic acid and Phormidium boryanum BTA16 in γ- linolenic acid (8.82%) were considered as the potential candidates for fatty acids profiling, however palmitic acid C16:0 was common and recorded in all 38 examined strains.

Key words: Cyanobacteria, Fatty acids, Lipids, Non-heterocystous, Rice fields