Oil palm empty fruit bunches (OPEFB) are the lignocellulosic complex organic waste material from palm oil mills that is cheap, environmentally friendly, and abundant in Indonesia. Slow degradation of OPEFB becomes a problem for oil palm plantations. OPEFB which has decayed naturally for 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years were obtained from the Oil Palm Plantation, PTPN VIII Cikasungka, Bogor, Indonesia. In this study, fungal and bacterial diversity in naturally decaying OPEFB in plantations was identified using Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the ITS2 for fungal, the V3 region of the 16S rRNA gene, and the V4 region of the 18S rRNA gene for bacterial. Bacterial diversity in decaying OPEFB was dominated by the phylum Planctomycetes (40-60%), whereas most of the fungal sequences taken belonged to Ascomycota (60-90%). Biodiversity profile resulting from metagenomic analysis is useful for increasing knowledge about microbial composition in the natural degradation process of OPEFB. The resulting data can be used to compare the diversity of bacteria at different weathering times and depths. In-depth observation of the diversity of lignin-degrading microbes from the natural decomposition of OPEFB has the potential to discover novel enzymes and ligninolytic activities that are useful for the fast degradation of OPEFB, production of biofuels based on enzymatic technology, and the development of high value-added biomass products.
Keywords: 16S rRNA gene sequencing; Lignocellulose degradation; Microbial diversity; OPEFB.
© 2022 The Author(s).