Fortification of Chlorella vulgaris with citrus peel amino acid for improvement biomass and protein quality

Abstract

The amino acid extract (protein hydrolysate) from various citrus peels was employed as an organic nutrition source for the culture of Chlorella to investigate their effects on the biomass and protein quality of the microalgae. The major amino acids in citrus peels included proline, asparagine, aspartate, alanine, serine, and arginine. The most plentiful amino acids in the Chlorella were alanine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, glycine, serine, threonine, leucine, proline, lysine, and arginine. Adding the citrus peel amino acid extracts to the Chlorella medium enhanced overall microalgal biomass (more than two folds p 0.05). The present research shows that citrus peels have good nutritional quality and could be used for the inexpensive cultivation of Chlorella biomass with potential utility for food application.

Keywords

• Citrus peel
• Chlorella vulgaris
• Biomass
• Amino acid profile
• Protein quality