ABSTRACT
To meet today’s increasing demand for hazard and risk assessment, more rapid and simpler biomonitoring methods are required.1
In the field of bioassays involving primary producers, flask toxicity testing with the green alga Selenastrum capricornutum has been widely employed to conduct both enrichment and toxicity studies since the 1970s.2-4 More recently, a simpler and more cost-efficient microplate assay has been developed successfully and has shown good agreement with the flask assay in screening the toxic potential of metals, effluents and herbicides.5,6 One attractive feature of a microplate-based assay is its automation potential, motivating on its own the development of other useful microplate-associated phytotoxicity assays.7,8 Currently, such microassays tend generally to report chronic measurement endpoints (eg, cell growth inhibition) which require exposure times of 72-96 h. However, from a practical point of view it would certainly be advantageous to obtain toxicity results within one working day.
