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Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst mapped and characterized the microbial populations in a vegetable fermentation facility and reported that its microbiome was distinct between the production and fermentation zones and that the raw vegetables themselves were the main ones. sources of fermentation. associated microbes in production areas rather than manipulation or other environmental sources.
Write in Applied and environmental microbiologyJonah Einson, UMass Amherst Commonwealth Honors College's student and co-lead author, along with researcher Asha Rani and senior professor David Sela, say the study helps solve the problem of transferring microbes to a fermentation facility.
The UMass Amherst team collaborated with scientists from two units of the US Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and another in Winchester, Massachusetts.
Real Pickles is a worker-owned cooperative in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It manufactures pickles, sauerkraut and other vegetables fermented in the old, by natural fermentation and without starting microbial cultures or other environments. The nutritional microbiologist Sela notes that the microbiomes of these facilities are very little known. Fermented foods are becoming increasingly popular internationally, he adds, because of their nutritional properties, their cultural history and their improved flavors.
Sela says, "We are grateful for the cooperation and collaboration we have received from Real Pickles management and staff for the opportunity to carry out this interesting research, and we are delighted that they have been so open to working with us. FDA companies would be comfortable bringing in government regulators to assist with scientific research, representing a tremendous partnership between universities, governments, and industry.
Company founder Dan Rosenberg says, "It is fascinating to learn about the influence of fresh vegetables on the microbiome of our plant and suggests that the use of organic vegetables is important to support a diverse microbial community. further improve our production practices to produce fermented and probiotic foods of the highest quality. We are excited to participate in research that enhances the understanding of fermented food production and nutrition. "
Sela notes that he, Einson, and Rani used a state-of-the-art approach for this investigation, using high throughput sequencing and genomics to identify the microbial species present instead of cultivating the microbes. This allowed the team to quickly identify more microbes than conventional methods, to estimate their relative numbers, to predict their likely function and to determine the flow of microbes in and around the world. interior of the installation.
He adds: "For the first time, we built a map of the facility and how it was transformed during the fermentation, which gave us a more complete picture of the population in a real vegetable fermentation plant. to a certain extent, but we think that fermented vegetable production facilities could be better characterized, and because we are using these new genomic tools, we better understand what is there and how they got there. that everything is cultural, then we would have a much more limited image. "
The researchers report that Leuconostoc and Lactobacillaceae dominated all surfaces where spontaneous fermentation occurs. In addition, they found that "the surfaces of walls, floors, ceilings and barrels harbor unique microbial signatures".
Sela says that Einson, now a student at Columbia University, took the lead in this study as an undergraduate. He cleaned the surfaces of the fermentation room, treatment area and dry storage areas to collect microbial samples, identify microbes present before and after cleaning and link specific microbes at certain stages of the processing of the microbial samples. food. After graduating, Rani took over and completed the project.
Sela says the next steps could be to see if similar results could appear in other vegetable processing plants around the world, whether seasonal changes could be observed and whether cleaning protocols for microbial populations are changing.
"It's not as important when you're doing traditional sauerkraut," he says, "but some other food processing facilities may be spoiled, and it would be interesting to see microbes in various stages. see this as a consumer, but it's expensive when a whole lot is lost, and we may be able to find a way to predict when this could happen by understanding the microbiological communities that surround the processes. "
This work was funded in part by the Center for Produce Safety, and Einson was supported by a scholarship from the American Society for Microbiology, a UMass research assistant at Amherst Commonwealth Honors College, and a UMass Amherst Center. summer environmental researchers.
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