ABSTRACT
The microphytobenthos is far less investigated than phytoplankton; therefore, methods in current use, and especially for standing crop measurement, have been adapted from those used in plankton research. There is a huge literature concerning the so-called "conventional" techniques. Worth mentioning are the fluorometric method and the spectrophotometric methods (trichromatic and acidification methods). There are, however, several problems with the conventional methods. In the trichromatic method the postulations for the validity of the Lambert-Beer's law (on which spectrometry depends) are not fulfilled. Various methods of chromatography have been used extensively for the analysis of algal pigments in phytoplankton and microphytobenthos research. These include column, paper, thin layer (TLC), high-performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC), and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Rapid HPLC technique may be a good alternative to the conventional methods but the full HPLC method, giving much more information, especially on phaeopigments, is recommended when these phaeopigments are expected in high concentration and the number of samples to analyze is low.
