A new method to isolate algal species from mix algal culture

To meet the issues of energy and environment, algae cultivation for biofuel and CO2 sequestration is getting popular at the global level. Specific algal strains have been identified for production of biofuel, biomolecules and biomass. To start algae cultivation at lab or industrial scale, it is requirement to have isolated and identified algal culture for targeted products. Water sample for algae from aquatic system is usually consist of mix culture of algae and need to be processed for targeted isolated algal strains using reported techniques like streaking, spraying, serial dilution, and single-cell isolations. But none of these techniques is considered as efficient or popular except streaking on agar plate which involves a set of microbial techniques and may take months to make isolation properly. Here, a new method is proposed to make alginic acid solution using aquatic sample followed by pouring it in calcium chloride solution drop by drop which makes the beads with single or more algal species trapped in each bead. The trapped algal species in the beads are grown in 96 wells plate having single bead in each well with standard medium leading to microscopic verification of the isolated algal species to process further. A mix culture from a lake was subjected to isolation using proposed method and excellent results were obtained in one week duration.