like for unicellular algae its easier to take the OD measurement at few days interval and construct the growth curve, its becoming difficult in case of filamentous algae as its forming a suspension in the medium. is there any other way to find the growth analysis?
I would recommend measuring chlorophyll and using it as a parameter for growth if your strains are photosynthetic.
For agar plate you can use image analysis as the estimate of the growth. For the suspension you must suspend or disintegrate algae in clumps then mix them very well and filtrate. For algae on filter you can use spectral methods to measure absorbance or make pigment (chlorophyll) content. If you have lot of biomass you can make also dry weight.
If the algae (cyanobacteria) make big colonies, mild disintegration and mixing is only option for spectroscopy. Then for first measurement make 10 - 30 repetitions for statistics. The behavior can be extremely variable and depends on the character of the creature and colonies. This limits our work with filamentous and colonial species and nobody likes this job, but it makes any results quite unique...
Dear Sudipta,
If you don´t have spectroscopic tools you can determine the average number of cell/filament and later use this like an estimation of total number count in terms of number of filaments, but in any case the better techniques are described before for Gayathri and Ondrej.
I would not reccomend an indirect spectroscopic method, the main problem is the unequal distribution of filaments even after homogenization.
Chlorophyll content of cells may vary with growth conditions.
Try direct determination of dry weight by midl homogenization / filtration / drying. This is in our hands the most reliable method.
With appropriate dilution, i think the spectrophotometric measurement will be useful for overall growth. BUt this can not be used for calculation of SGR.
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