Abstract
Kombucha is a fermented tea with a combination of yeast and bacteria. Kombucha teas may have a variable microbiota based on geographic origin and cultural conditions. The microbial flora of kombucha has been studied with culture-dependent methods. But, the improvement of the metataxonomic approach has broadened our perspective on fermented foods. In this study, a kombucha mother was procured from an artisanal supplier in Türkiye. High-throughput new-generation sequencing (16S rRNA and Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS)) was carried out to investigate the microbial communities of kombucha after 7 days of fermentation in both liquid tea (L) and pellicle (P). Microbial counts, pH (4.42 ± 0.01 and 3.50 ± 0.02), and TA% (0.26 ± 0.02 and 0.60 ± 0.04) were also detected on the first and 7th days of fermentation. According to metataxonomic results, the dominant bacteria were Komagataeibacter obediens (%21.13), an acetic acid-producing bacteria, and the dominant fungal genus was Pichia kudriavzevii (64.35%) in L while Romboutsia sp. CE17 was the dominant bacteria (7%) and Pichia kudriavzevii was also the dominant yeast in P. This study also revealed different species which were not common in kombucha including propionic acid and butyric acid-producing bacteria such as Anaerotignum propionicum and Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens, a butyrivibriocin producing bacteria. Accordingly, different yeast species were detected such as Tetrapisispora phaffii and Ogataea polimorpha.
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Data availability
The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. Raw data supporting the findings of this research are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request. All the sample raw reads from metataxonomic research have been deposited at NCBI under the BioProject ID PRJNA742890.
Abbreviations
- ITS:
-
Internal Transcribed Spacer
- DRBCA:
-
Dichloran Rose Bengal Chloramphenicol agar
- MRS:
-
De Man, Rogosa and Sharpe
- PCR:
-
Polymerase Chain Reaction
- DNA:
-
Deoxyribonucleic Acid
- QC:
-
Quality Control
- OTU:
-
Operational taxonomic unit
- NCBI:
-
The National Center for Biotechnology Information
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank local supplier of kombucha mother. This study was carried out in the Başkent University laboratory, the author would like to thank Başkent University for its technical support.
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Kahraman-Ilıkkan, Ö. Microbiome composition of kombucha tea from Türkiye using high-throughput sequencing. J Food Sci Technol 60, 1826–1833 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-023-05725-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-023-05725-z