Of many culprit organisms that may result in the deterioration of algal culture performance and biomass yield, grazing zooplankton, or so called predators, often are responsible for frequent culture ‘crashes’ and loss of productivity altogether. Except for a few algal strains that can tolerate extreme growing environments that are deterrents to many contaminants, the hazard of predator contamination is so great that sustainable cultivation of many algal crops of economic interest – in particular, oil-producing algal strains on a large scale – has not been possible.
