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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: Red – the magic color for solar salt production (Litchfield, 1991) refers to the characteristic color of saltern crystallizer ponds, due to dense communities of carotenoid-rich Halobacteria (Archaea), the bacterium Salinibacter and the alga Dunaliella. However, the first report from the western world mentioning red brines in salt production facilities probably dates from 1765: the Encyclopédie of Diderot. Earlier descriptions of marine solar salterns since Roman times do not mention red colors of crystallizer brines. These include the Astronomica of Manilius, Naturalis Historia by Pliny (both 1st century), the description of salterns near Volterra in De Reditu Suo by Namatianus (5th century), Agricola’s De Re Metallica (1556) and an anonymous detailed description of French salterns (1669). Based on this negative evidence, we hypothesize that in earlier times saltern brines were never red. In salterns operated today in the traditional way as practiced in the Middle Ages, no red brines are observed. Crystallizer brines in the salterns of Sečovlje (Slovenia) and Ston (Croatia) contain up to 3x106 prokaryotic cells/ml only, an order of magnitude lower than the brines of modern salt production facilities. We attribute the much lower microbial densities in traditional salterns to the much shorter brine residence time. In China, red saltern brines were documented earlier: in Li Shizhen’s compendium of Materia Medica Ben Cao Kang Mu, completed in 1578 but based on older sources.
Keywords: history; archaea; carotenoids; pigmentation; salterns. |
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