OSPREY algal cultivation 16S Sequencing
This project responds to a critical industry need to improve annualized productivity, stability, and quality of algal production strains for biofuels and bioproducts. Most importantly, we are dedicated to starting in the field and finishing in the field. We aim to generate process innovations rooted in established outdoor systems for strain selection, improvement, maintenance and cultivation as well as pest detection and tracking. These 16S samples have been taken from the year-round cultivation of a Nannochloropsis strain in 3 outdoor systems for ~3 years. We used a field-adapted (since 2017) strain collected from Qualitas ponds in Imperial, TX to seed ponds at the coastal California (San Diego, California Center for Algae Biotechnology, CAL-CAB/UCSD) and Hawaii (Kailua Kona, Cyanotech) field sites. The unique environmental selection pressures of each outdoor system will allow us to develop robust cultivars and will facilitate process innovations with broad geographic applicability. We also established the field-adapted Nannochloropsis in three laboratories: NMC/LANL, NMSU, and UCSD, using field cultivation media manufactured at the TX field site to avoid inconsistencies associated with varied nutrient and water chemistries. Throughout the project, we tracked trait evolution across the field and lab sites, developed novel pest tracking tools, and aimed to improve the field strain through non-GM methods. As pest management tools come online, they will be validated and deployed at the Qualitas and Cyanotech field sites. These 16S sequence files were from samples harvested every other week for ~2.5 years from all three outdoor locations and every 6 months from the lab sites.