Flavio Luis Schmidt
University of Campinas, Brazil
Title: Monitoring the coffee fermentation by carbonic maceration using metagenome analysis
Biography
Biography: Flavio Luis Schmidt
Abstract
Carbonic maceration is a post-harvest fermentation process used by coffee producers to increase the product quality and added value to the product. As this is a new process, there is little information about the microbiota involved. To understand that, 3 fermentation processes were carried out in 2 Brazilian farms. The coffees cherries were fermented on different containers and sampled every 24 hours, up to the end of fermentation (at least 6 days). The samples were frozen and sent to metagenomic analysis. In the laboratory, the sample was mixed with saline solution until the fruit break the bark and exposure the beans and handly homogenized. The genetic material was extracted from this liquid and a two-step PCR was used to prepare the library and the sequencing was done in a MiSeq system, using the standard Illumina primers. For bacterial analysis, the genetic material used came from the 16S rRNA gene, and for fungus from the ITS1 gene. A huge number of 140 species of bacteria and 209 fungi species were identified in the samples, with at least 5504 fungus and 4090 bacteria sequences in a single sample. The most prominent identified sequences were from Enterobacteriaceae, Cladosporiaceae, and Saccharomycetaceae family, respectively for bacterias, fungus and yeasts. Different species of fermentative microorganisms were identified, including Acetobacter, Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces. The metagenomic analysis brought very complete information about the microbial population present on these fermentation processes and is the first step to understand the chemical changes in the coffee beans.