About biomass overyielding of mixed cultures in batch processes

Alain Rapaport (1) , Thibault Nidelet (2) , Sahar El Aida (2, 1) , Jérome Harmand (3)

1 MISTEA - Mathématiques, Informatique et STatistique pour l'Environnement et l'Agronomie
2 SPO - Sciences Pour l'Oenologie
3 LBE - Laboratoire de Biotechnologie de l'Environnement [Narbonne]

We study mechanisms that can produce an increase of biomass production in batch processes when considering mixed cultures, compared to pure cultures. We show that growth thresholds or variable yields can produce 'overyielding', while this is not possible in the classical batch model with multiple species. We give sufficient conditions on the characteristics of the species to obtain overyielding, and illustrate these theoretical results with numerical simulations. This work provides new insights on species complementary in models of mixed cultures, without having to consider direct interactions terms between species as, for instance in the well known Generalized Lotka-Volterra model.

Mots clés: optimization; overyielding; diversity; complex ecosystems; transient; batch culture

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie; Systèmes dynamiques [math.DS]; Optimisation et contrôle [math.OC]

Alain Rapaport, Thibault Nidelet, Sahar El Aida, Jérome Harmand. About biomass overyielding of mixed cultures in batch processes. Mathematical Biosciences, 2020, 322, pp.1-26. ⟨10.1016/j.mbs.2020.108322⟩. ⟨hal-02469862⟩