Analyzing bacterial community in pit mud of Yibin Baijiu in China using high throughput sequencing

Li Chen; Yuzhu Li; Lei Jin; Li He; Xiaolin Ao; Shuliang Liu; Yong Yang; Aiping Liu; Shujuan Chen; Likou Zou

doi:10.7717/peerj.9122

Analyzing bacterial community in pit mud of Yibin Baijiu in China using high throughput sequencing

PeerJ. 2020 May 12:8:e9122. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9122. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Li Chen^#¹, Yuzhu Li^#², Lei Jin³, Li He², Xiaolin Ao², Shuliang Liu², Yong Yang², Aiping Liu², Shujuan Chen², Likou Zou³

Affiliations

¹ Yibin Products Quality Supervision and Inspection Institute, Yibin, Sichuan, China.
² College of Food Science, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, Sichuan, China.
³ College of Resources, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

"Yibin Baijiu" (YB) is a special Chinese strong-aroma Baijiu (CSAB) that originated in Yibin, a city in western China. YB is fermented in cellars lined with pit mud (PM), the microbiota in which may affect YB quality. In this study, high throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used to demonstrate the bacterial community structure and diversity in PM of YB. In addition, the physicochemical characteristics of PM were also analyzed, including moisture content, pH, and available phosphorous, ammonia nitrogen, and humic acid levels. Results showed that Firmicutes was the dominant phylum in all PM samples with abundance > 70.0%, followed by Euryarchaeota (11.3%), Bacteroidetes (6.5%), Synergistetes (3.0%), Actinobacteria (1.4%), and Proteobacteria (1.2%). Furthermore, 14 different genera with average relative abundance of > 1% were detected. The Chao1 and Shannon indexes did not vary significantly between the sub-layer and middle-layer PM (P > 0.05). However, Linear discriminant analysis Effect Size (LEfSe) analysis showed that the relative abundance of Lactobacillus in the sub-layer PM was significantly higher than in middle-layer PM. pH differed significantly (P < 0.05) between the two groups. Canonical correspondence analysis revealed that bacterial community in PM correlated significantly with available phosphorous content and pH. Our study provides basic data for further elucidating the diversity of microbiota in the PM of YB and the potential mechanism of Baijiu production.

Keywords: Community structure; Illumina Hiseq sequencing; Pit mud; Yibin Baijiu.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Yibin Science and Technology Bureau (NO. 2017CNY001-4). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.