Revealing the correlation between the bacterial communities and physicochemical properties of ZaoPoCu, a traditional fermented food from Hainan Island

ABSTRACTThe bacterial communities of Zaopocu (ZPC), a tropical specialty fermented food in Hainan Island, were characterized in this study using high-throughput sequencing. Firmicutes and Proteobacteria were the two dominant phyla. The primary genus in ZPC_A was Weissella, while ZPC_B and ZPC_C had Lactobacillus as the dominant genus. The biomarker lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in ZPC_A were Lactobacillus brevis, Weissella confusa, and Leuconostoc citreum, whereas Lactobacillus amylolyticus and Lactobacillus helveticus were significantly higher in ZPC_B. In contrast, Lactobacillus pontis and Lactobacillus fermentum were the core LAB in ZPC_C. ZPC_A has the highest value of titratable acid (TA), amino acid, and lactic acid. TA had the most powerful influence on the structure of the bacterial communities, whereas salinity had a negligible effect. It is worth noting that ZPC may also faces food safety issue because opportunistic pathogenic bacteria like Stenotrophomonas and genes closely associated with Staphylococcus aureus infection were highly detected.