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Using a high-throughput sequencing technology to evaluate the various forage source epiphytic microbiota and their effect on fermentation quality and microbial diversity of Napier grass

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Abstract

Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) is well-known due to its high biomass production. The epiphytic microbiota was prepared from Napier, alfalfa, and red clover grass and served as an inoculum. The chopped sterilized Napier grass was inoculated with reconstituted epiphytic microbiota, and treatments were designed as: distilled water (N0); Napier grass epiphytic microbiota (NP); alfalfa epiphytic microbiota (AL); and red clover epiphytic microbiota (RC). The results reveal that the reconstituted epiphytic microbiota bacteria efficiently adapted in Napier grass silage, improved fermentation, and produced lactic acid. The alfalfa-grass inoculum rapidly dropped pH and enhanced the lactic acid (LA) and the ratio of lactic acid-to-acetic acid (LA/AA) during the entire ensiling process. However, red clover attains high lactic acid, while Napier grass produces high acetic acid-type fermentation at terminal silage. After day 60 of ensiling, Lactobacillus proportion was higher in AL (85.45%), and RC (59.44%), inocula as compared with NP (36.41%), inoculum. The NP inoculum terminal silage was diverse than AL and RC inocula and dominated by Enterobacter (16.32%) and Enterobacteriaceae (10.16%) and also significantly (p < 0.05) higher in acetic acid. The present study concluded that AL and RC epiphytic microbiota successfully develop and more efficient than Napier grass microbiota. It is suggested that abundant microbiota isolate from alfala and red clover and develop more economical and efficient inocula for quality fermentation of Napier grass silage in practice.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31672488) and the project of cultivation, processing, and utilization of forage in high temperature and humidity area (2017YFD0502016)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ensiling and Processing of Grass, College of Agro-Grassland Science, Nanjing Agricultural University, Weigang 1, Nanjing, 210095, China

    Niaz Ali, Siran Wang, Jie Zhao, Zhihao Dong, Junfeng Li, Mudasir Nazar & Tao Shao

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  1. Niaz Ali
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  2. Siran Wang
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  3. Jie Zhao
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  4. Zhihao Dong
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  5. Junfeng Li
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  6. Mudasir Nazar
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  7. Tao Shao
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Contributions

TS conceived and designed the experiments; NA performed the experiments and wrote the paper; SW, ZD, JZ sampled and analyzed data; JL, MN analyzed the data.

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Correspondence to Tao Shao.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing for financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Communicated by Erko Stackebrandt.

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Ali, N., Wang, S., Zhao, J. et al. Using a high-throughput sequencing technology to evaluate the various forage source epiphytic microbiota and their effect on fermentation quality and microbial diversity of Napier grass. Arch Microbiol 203, 4879–4890 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02296-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02296-5

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