Abstract: Microalgae is a unicellular photosynthetic autotrophic organism that widely distributes in nature as a primary producer. For half a century, microalgae has been used in food and medicine, renewable energy production, environmental protection and so on. In order to improve productivity or robustness, microalgae breeding technology has been developed significantly. The breeding of microalgae mainly includes two aspects: mutant acquisition and phenotypic detection. The mutants can be obtained through three ways: natural breeding, mutation breeding, and genetic engineering breeding. A variety of advanced breeding methods, including gene editing method CRISPR, have been gradually adopted in microalgae. High-throughput screening based on microalgae photosynthetic system, natural product spectra, and fluorescent labelling greatly facilitate the development of microalgae breeding. In this paper, microalgae breeding technologies are reviewed, and the future direction of microalgae breeding is discussed.

Key words: microalgae industrialization, mutation breeding, high throughput screening, spectroscopic analysis