Continuous Production of Natural Colorant, Betacyanin, by Beta vulgaris L. Hairy Root

It has been known that continuous cultivation of hairy root is difficult to maintain for a long period of time compared to the microbial and callus cultures. Chemostat cultivation was successfully carried out in order to economically produce a plant-based colorant, betacyanin, from red beet hairy root for more than 85 days in a 14-1 fermentor. The result from the chemostat cultivation was compared to those of the batch and fed-batch cultivations of red beet hairy roots. It was shown that hairy root reached its steady state within 50 days of the cultivation, and then maintained for about 25-30 days in a wide range of dilution rates. Total betacyanin production from the continuous process was also calculated to be 2.65g at 0.28(l/d) of dilution rate, compared to 0.196g from fed-batch cultivation. It was found that betacyanin production was a partially growth related process, yielding 0.376 mg/g-fresh wt. cell and $1.89{\times}10^{-5}$ mg/g-fresh wt. cell/d, with 0.92 of correlation factor in a partial growth-product model. It was also shown that the cell growth required was relatively large for maintenance amount of energy at a low dilution rate. The growth of hairy root was inhibited by high light intensity in following a photo-inhibition model. The growth parameters were estimated to be 0.3(l/d), $10.56kcal/\textrm{m}^2/h$,{\;}and{\;}35.81kcal/\textrm{m}^2/h$ for the maximum specific growth rate, half saturation light intensity, and inhibition light intensity, respectively.