Absorption-based highly sensitive and reproducible biochemical oxygen demand measurement method for seawater using salt-tolerant yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae ARIF KD-003.

Salt-tolerant yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae ARIF KD-003 was applied to highly sensitive and reproducible absorbance-based biochemical oxygen demand (BOD(AB-ScII)) measurement for seawater. In the previous work, we have studied the BOD(AB-ScI) method using normal Baker's yeast S. cerevisiae, and the excellent feature of the Baker's yeast as uniformly sustainable in solution could successfully be utilized. However, the BOD(AB-ScI) responses were disappeared by the existence of chloride ion as well as seawater. In the present method, uniformity in solution was also observed with S. cerevisiae ARIF KD-003, and salt-tolerance of the yeast was observed even in saturate concentration of sodium chloride. Next, characterizations of the influences of pH and incubation temperature were investigated. After optimum conditions were obtained, two calibration curves were made between 0.33 and 22 mg O2 L(-1) BOD using standard solution of glucose glutamic acid (GGA) or mixture of GGA and artificial seawater. Then, excellent reproducibility as the averages of relative standard deviation (R.S.D.(av)) in two calibration curves (nine points each) was successfully obtained at 1.10% at pure water or 1.03% at artificial seawater standard, respectively. In addition, the 3 sigma lower detection limit was calculated to be 0.07 mg O2 L(-1) BOD, and 0.11 mg O2 L(-1) BOD was experimentally detected by increase of the sample volume at 1.5-folds. The storage stability of the S. cerevisiae ARIF KD-003 was obtained at least 4 weeks.