Maryam Tjabadi Ebrahimi and Einar Ringo
The present study address to characterize the bacterial community of Tarkhineh, a traditional Iranian fermented cereal product, by conventional culturing and 16S rRNA clone library. Twenty-nine lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from culturing on Man, Rogosa and Sharpe agar were identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing and 55 clones from the 16S rRNA clone library. Discrepancies regarding the identity of the LAB were encountered by the two methods. By cultivation, Lactobacillus (Lb.) plantarum and Lb. casei were dominant followed by Lb. brevis, Lb. paracasei, Lb. paracasei subsp. paracasei, Lb. pentosus, Lb. zeae and uncultured bacterium clone MS-238. In contrast, construction of the clone library analysis revealed that the dominant clones belonged to Lb. paralimentarius, but Lb. alimentarius, Lb. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Lb. kefiri, Lb. kefiranofaciens subsp. kefirgranum, Lb. pontis, Lactobacillus sp. and Pediococcus were also detected. In addition to LAB, seven clones belonging to Bacillus and three bacterium clones were also detected.