1. Mining the Factors Driving the Evolution of the Pit Mud Microbiome under the Impact of Long-Term Production of Strong-Flavor Baijiu
- Author
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Chai Lijuan, Su-Yi Zhang, Xiaojuan Zhang, Zhen-Ming Lu, Xiao-Zhong Zhong, Wang Songtao, Cai-Hong Shen, Qian Wei, Xu Zhenghong, and Jin-Song Shi
- Subjects
China ,Wine ,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology ,Chinese strong-flavor baijiu ,Clostridia ,volatile metabolites ,parasitic diseases ,Food science ,Microbiome ,Relative species abundance ,Ecology ,biology ,Bacteria ,microbial biomass ,Microbiota ,Methanosarcina ,biology.organism_classification ,Archaea ,prokaryotic communities ,Flavoring Agents ,Microbial population biology ,Food Storage ,Metagenomics ,Fermentation ,Food Microbiology ,Clay ,different-aged pit mud ,Food Science ,Biotechnology - Abstract
The mud cellar creates a unique microenvironment for the fermentation of strong-flavor baijiu (SFB). Recent research and long-term practice have highlighted the key roles of microbes inhabiting pit mud in the formation of SFB’s characteristic flavor. A positive correlation between the quality of SFB and cellar age was extracted from practice; however, the evolutionary patterns of pit mud microbiome and driving factors remain unclear. Here, based on the variation regularity analysis of microbial community structure and metabolites of samples from cellars of different ages (∼30/100/300 years), we further investigated the effects of lactate and acetate (main microbial metabolites in fermented grains) on modulating the pit mud microbiome. Esters (50.3% to 64.5%) dominated the volatile compounds identified in pit mud, and contents of the four typical acids (lactate, hexanoate, acetate, and butyrate) increased with cellar age. Bacteria (9.5 to 10.4 log10 [lg] copies/g) and archaea (8.3 to 9.1 lg copies/g) mainly constituted pit mud microbiota, respectively dominated by Clostridia (39.7% to 81.2%) and Methanomicrobia (32.8% to 92.9%). An upward trend with cellar age characterized the relative and absolute abundance of the most predominant bacterial and archaeal genera, Caproiciproducens and Methanosarcina. Correlation analysis revealed significantly (P
- Published
- 2021