SOME PROBLEMS IN THE CULTIVATION OF ALGAE 



H. C. BOLD 

 Vanderbilt Unwersity, Nashville, Tenn. 



I have deliberately employed a rather nebulous title for this 

 paper because it is my purpose to discuss several aspects of the cul- 

 tivation of algae which are themselves in need of clarification. 

 It is now almost sixty years since Beijerinck (1890), following 

 the pioneer methods of bacteriologists, mixed his Chlorella-coT^ 

 taining ditch water with melted gelatine, and obtained pure 

 cultures of the organism by plating. Although great advances 

 have been made since in the technique of cultivation, and impor- 

 tant results have been obtained from the study of algae in pure 

 culture, the field is still an open one in need of further devebp- 

 ment in a number of aspects, but especially in respect to applica- 

 tion of methods. 



In the first place, it seems to the author that from one point 

 of view we are again in the position of Beijerinck who adopted 

 the techniques of bacteriologists available in his time, but we are 

 not taking advantage of those techniques in applying them fruit- 

 fully to some of the problems that confront the modern phycol- 

 ogist. I have reference here, for example, to the classification of 

 many unicellular and colonial algae, especially Chlorophytan 

 forms, the taxonomy of which is nothing short of chaotic. Just as 

 the early bacteriologists naively collected and described bacterial 

 species from various habitats, before it had become clear that the 

 real criteria of taxonomic delimitation must be obtained from 

 prolonged morphological and physiological studies, so even in 

 this day, many phycologists blithely, and perhaps with equal 

 naivete, collect unicellular algae and name them, often from pre- 

 served material in which most of the morphological criteria are 

 no longer recognizable. 



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