I was using Bold's Basal Medium and trying to culture the microalgae (Botryococcus sudeticus) in lab under luminus light bulbs for the past 10 months but I didn’t see a satisfying growth rate so far.
Try using F/2 medium. It's a well known medium with acceptable results. Try to triple the concentration and it might work. Have in mind that Botryococcus is a slow grower. F/2 medium recipe: https://ncma.bigelow.org/node/79
I don't know of anyone who can get a satisfying growth rate with Botryococcus compared to other species, regardless of the medium. It appears that it is just a very slow growing algae.
Careful F/2 is a marine medium Botryococcus sudeticus is a freshwater strain. F/2 will likely kill it. UTEX is growing it in a modified Bold's media (http://web.biosci.utexas.edu/utex/mediaDetail.aspx?mediaID=55) and a soil water extract. If you do not need axenic cultures the soil water is the way to go. When you say your rate of growth is not satisfactory how many doublings are you speaking about? The media may not be your problem.
Also I grow most of my freshwater strains in WC media, but it is complex to make.
BBM has a very high amount of dissolved salts and its trace element mix has trace metals at much higher levels than found in all other freshwater media. In addition many BBM media recipes are wrong because of the very poor presentation in the original paper. Many algae will not grow in BBM because it kills them by metal poisoning. I suggest you try BG-11 (Stein - Phycological Methods). It works with nearly all green algae. You can reduce NaNO3 to about 3-5 mM with no effects on growth and works fine with 3 mM NH4Cl or NH4NO3. BG-11 with the trace element mix used for f/2 seems to work just as well as the BG-11 trace mix and has much lower levels of metals.
I have found many algae do not like EDTA. Use an equimolar amount of citric acid instead to make up the trace element mix.
There is a dogma that algae only need biotin or thiamine or B12 vitamins or no vitamins. I am suspicious that this is not true. I think some, at least need paraaminobenzoic acid. Try it out.
Try using Chu 10, WC or BG 11 media. Any of them should work out just fine! The LC Oligo medium may also be tried as we have used it with success. In addition, the LC Oligo medium is a cost effective alternative to the other media due to the absence of vitamins and EDTA in it.
Hi, I was working with two different strains of Botryococcus and I remember that both of them grow solwly. Check our paper that was published on 1991, maybe could be interesting for you. Actually I´m checking differente agricultural fertilizent, when I finish the experimentation. I can share with you the results (after I send it to publish, ok?)
Dear all, Thank you so much for sharing ..... its really helpful for me....
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