lipid and β-carotene production by rhodosporidium diobovatum cultured with different carbon to nitrogen ratios

Background: in food industry, carotenoids are used as food colorants conferring yellow to red color. this research was designed to study on lipid and β-carotene production by rhodosporidium diobovatum cultured with different carbon to nitrogen (c/n) ratios. methods: r. diobovatum was cultured in a medium containing 40 g/l glucose (as the carbon source) and different c/n ratios (20, 50, and 80), which were established by adding different amounts of (nh4)2so4 (3.78, 1.51, and 0.94 g/l) as the source of nitrogen. high performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, and microplate reader were used to determine the glucose concentration, lipid production, and β-carotene concentration, respectively. data were analyzed using ibm spss statistics (v. 24). results: cultures with a c/n ratio of 50 produced the greatest amount of lipids during 120 h pi. however, lipid synthesis in the first 48 h pi was very low for all three c/n ratios. analyses of the lipid composition revealed that oleic acid and linoleic acid were the dominant (60%) fatty acids. cultures with a c/n ratio of 50 also produced the greatest amount of β-carotene. conclusion: r. diobovatum in the c/n of 50 culture medium resulted in greater concentrations of lipid and β-carotene. defining the optimum c/n ratio will enable development of optimized bioprocess engineering parameters for scale-up production of lipid and β-carotene in food industries by this yeast species.