Acta Horti Bot. Bucurest. 2016, 43: 19-30 DOI: 10.1515/ahbb-2016-0002 GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND BIOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF LYNGBYA SP. BDU 90901 UNDER DIFFERENT NITRATE CONCENTRATIONS VEENA Dalavai 1 , PARAMAGEETHAM Chinthala 1* , PRASADA BABU Gundala 1 , JAYA KUMAR Kannali 1 , CHARAN TEJA Pindi 1 , SWARNA KUMARI Gajula 1 Abstract: The present research work was carried out for assessing the optimum culture conditions for the growth and chemical constituents of Lyngbya sp. BDU 90901. The blue green bacteria belonging to Cyanobacteria ( Lyngbya sp. BDU 90901) was obtained from NFMC, Bharatidasan University, exposed to different nutrient concentrations of nitrogen to claim the biologically effect of proteins, glucose and pigmentation. Growth medium of ASN III was used for vegetative control growth, while experimental growth was performed under different nitrate concentrations. The applied concentrations were 0, ½, 1, 1½ and 2 folds of nitrate concentrations of original ASNIII medium. The metabolites considered for biochemical analysis were pigmentation, protein and glucose content. Optical density was considered for growth parameter and so deliberated from 0 th day to 10 th day and intervals of 5 days up till 30 th day. Under different nitrate concentrations, on 15 th day, the rise in chlorophyll-a and carotenes was noticed in 1 and 2 folds respectively, the increment in protein content was 1 fold, the glucose content was high in ½ and 1 fold on the 20 th day. Key words: Marine Cyanobacteria, nitrate availability, glucose, proteins and pigment analysis. Received 18 July 2016 Accepted 16 October 2016 Introduction Cyanobacteria is the major group of bacteria that occurs throughout the world. They are also known as blue-green algae. These photosynthetic prokaryotes are found in almost aquatic and terrestrial environment (Castenholz & Waterbury 1989).They show specify growth pattern in a specific environment and therefore the distribution, ecology, periodicity, qualitative and quantitative occurrence of Cyanobacteria differ widely. They are pioneer oxygen prototroph on earth whose distribution around the world is surpassed only by bacteria. Their diversity ranges from unicellular to multicellular, coccoid to branched filaments, nearly colorless to intensely pigmented, autotrophic to heterotrophic, psychrophilic to thermophilic, acidophilic to alkylophilic, planktonic to barophilic, fresh water to marine including hyper saline (Yoo et al. 1995, Broady 1996, Thajuddin & Subramanian 2005). However their abilities to survive under adverse conditions by forming resting spores, opportunistically colonizing microhabitats and surviving under conditions of high UV-flux through production of UV - absorbing 1 Department of Microbiology, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati-517502, Andhra Pradesh, India. * Correspondence: paramageetham@yahoo.com