Research Projects

Objective: 1. Mass cultivation of microalgae biomass in open and closed bioreactor systems at 1000 L level 2. Downstream processing of microalgae biomass, nutrition quality and toxicity evaluation of two best performing strains in experimental animal models 3. Composite feed development and evaluation in poultry model

Summary: The project addresses the food vs feed competition and aims at reducing the dependency on the cereal, pulses and oilseeds in developing animal feed or feed concentrates. We propose utilization of microalgae biomass and microalgae protein concentrates for animal feed development. Currently, 60% of animal feed is composed of food crops creating a huge deficit in availability of food crops. Microalgae such as Spirulina platensis, Chlorella sp., Scenedesmus sp., have been identified with high protein content (>40% dry mass), carotenoids and micronutrients viz., iron and zinc. The project envisages mass cultivation of microalgae utilizing spent water from food processing thereby reducing cultivation costs. Algae biomass would be processed into different formats and evaluated for safety and nutritional quality in rodent and poultry models.