Resumen
Microalgae have recently attracted global attention for its variety of valuable compounds production, and potential as energy crop. However, high microalgae biomass productivity with high lipid content are usually difficult to achieve simultaneously. In this paper, various stress environments like nutrient starvation (Experiment A), salinity (Experiment B) and light effect (Experiment C) were introduced to microalgae after harvesting process, rather than during cultivation stage, to study the effect on its lipid content. This is to ensure a desired amount of microalgae biomass is obtained before increasing the lipid content in the microalgae cells through environmental stresses. From the results attained, one day of nutrient starvation with 6.0 g/L of salinity stress under dark room condition had shown the highest lipid yield of 38.8%. Also, the main fatty acids identified in the microalgae lipid were consisting of linoleic, linolenic and palmitic acid. These fatty acids are usually found in corn oil, soybean oil and also sunflower oil and shared common characteristic where majority of the fatty acids were composed of unsaturated fatty acids.