Effect of Different Levels of Salinity on Growth and Lipid Content in Freshwater Microalgae

Salinity imposes stress on various living organisms like microalgae, the study focuses on the effect of salinity concentrations on cell growth and lipid content for four isolated freshwater microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris, Scenedesmus sp., Nitzschia palea, and Anabaena sp.). These selected algae were cultured in different treatments of salinity (0.5, 1.5, 1.5, and 2.5 gm/l). The results show that changes in salinity have significant effects on growth and lipid content, the growth tends to decline as salinity increases. Lipid content was different among studying algae depending on the range of tolerance, the amount of lipids increased when salinity increased too.