Search

The crab and seafood processing industry must fulfill standard requirements for sanitation, hygiene, and good manufacturing methods to ensure the safety of the products and free from foodborne bacteria. However, equipment and processing unit surfaces are challenging to clean optimally, which can cause persistent bacteria to emerge. Eliminating persistent bacteria is the latest challenge in the fish processing industry for optimal disinfection, preventing cross-contamination, and controlling foodborne outbreaks. Microbiological testing in industry has been limited to selective culture-media techniques; thus, a rapid, sensitive, accurate, and routine applicable analytical method is urgently needed. The significant reduction in the costs of high-throughput sequencing technologies supports the possibility of routine applications in the industry. This study aimed to determine the profile of the microbial community on the surface of the production room and blue-swimming crab processing unit equipment using short-read metagenomic techniques. The analysis included the stages of sampling, bacterial incubation, bacterial DNA isolation, sequencing, and bioinformatics analysis. The first important step to increase the possibility of routine adoption in the seafood industry is to reduce the cost, complexity, and time required to complete the analysis. Therefore, in this protocol, we generate a scalable, flexible, cost-effective, and auditable workflow. • Collection of bacterial samples by swabbing the surface of the equipment using a sterile cotton swab and sterile cloth, which is easy to apply and follow in the blue-swimming crab processing plant industry. • Effective and efficient sample-pooling is an important step in identifying bacterial communities by metagenomic analysis.

Sample collection activities for a study of population genetics across the natural distribution of targeted tree species require a lot of resources, mainly if repeated field visits are necessary. Conventionally, population genetic studies use good sample material like leaves. In addition, cambium or small pieces of fresh wood can be used to replace leaf samples. Currently, restrictions from the permit regulation have caused only a limited number of samples that can be collected. Therefore, efficient use of samples must be designed to maximize their uses for research. Due to the small amount of successfully sampled materials, hence there are limitations to extend their uses for other analyses and are often sufficient only for genetic analysis. Therefore, innovation in sampling methods using pickering punch (https://www.agroisolab.com/pickering-punch) to collect ebony wood cores in this study is required to cover multi-analyses not only limited to genetics but also for other analyses such as isotopes, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRs), anatomy, and chemical compounds. • Pickering punch is recommended for efficient wood core sample collection from ebony standing trees. • 323 wood core samples were successfully collected from 16 natural populations across Celebes (Sulawesi). • Multi-analyses studies on sampled wood cores are possible for ebony wood identification (e.g., species and origin/provenance).