ABSTRACT
Microalgae have long been cultivated commercially for human nutritional products around the world in several small-to medium-scale production systems, producing a few tons to several hundred tons of biomass annually. It is estimated that the total world commercial microalgal biomass production is at about 10,000 tons per year. e predominant microalgal species currently cultivated photosynthetically for the production of nutritional products are Spirulina sp., Chlorella sp., Dunaliella sp., and
Haematococcus sp. Microalgae are a rich source of protein and other nutritional substances such as carbohydrates and fatty acids (FAs), as can be found in higher plants (Hiremath and Mathad 2010). ey play an important role as primary producers of various consumers such as rotifer, copepods, and shrimps, which are, in turn, fed to late larval and juvenile sh and crustaceans (Richmond 1996; Seyfabadi et al. 2011). Chlorella vulgaris is one such green microalga found cosmopolitan in occurrence. Microalgae are a diverse group of prokaryotic or eukaryotic photosynthetic microorganisms with natural growing requirements such as light, sugars, CO2, N, P, and K that can produce pigments and a variety of biochemicals in large amounts over short periods of time; they are an untapped resource with more than 25,000 species.
