Analysis of archaeal community structure in pit mud of strong-flavor Baijiu from different regions

Abstract

Using the pit mud samples from strong-flavor (Nongxiangxing) Baijiu factories in Longnan, Gansu (JH), Yibin, Sichuan (LZ, YQ, XG), and Chengdu, Sichuan (TC) regions as research objects, the archaeal community diversity in pit mud was analyzed by high-throughput sequencing technology, and the differences in archaeal communities of pit mud from different regions of Baijiu factories were investigated using principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA). The results showed that the distribution of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of the 5 pit mud samples were similar, among which the LZ pit mud sample had the highest archaeal community richness and diversity. Euryarchaeota (the relative abundance>99%) was absolute dominant archaeal phylum in all 5 pit mud samples at the phylum level, and Methanobacterium and Methanobrevibacter (the relative abundance≥10%) were common dominat archeal genera at the genus level. In addition, the dominant archaeal genera also included Methanosarcina in TC and JH samples(the relative abundance were 18.90% and 25.18%, respectively), and also included Methanoculleus (the relative abundance was 34.25%) and Methanomethylophilus (the relative abundance was 18.87%) in LZ sample. The results of PCA and HCA showed that the archaeal community structure was similar between the JH and TC samples, the XG and YQ samples, and the archaeal community structure of the LZ sample was significantly different from that of other pit mud samples.

Keywords

• strong-flavor baijiu|pit mud|archaeal community|high-throughput sequencing|hierarchical clustering analysis