Mycobiome Diversity in Traditionally Prepared Starters for Alcoholic Beverages in India by High-Throughput Sequencing Method

Chowan, dawdim, humao, hamei, khekhrii, and phut are sun-dried starters used for preparation of alcoholic beverages in North East regions of India. We attempted to profile the mycobiome community in these starters by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) method. All fungal populations were found to be restricted to Ascomycota (67-99%), Zygomycota (0.7-29%), Basidiomycota (0.03-7%), and Chytridiomycota (0.0003%). We found 45 core operational taxonomic units (OTUs) which were universally present and were further weighed to 41 genera level and 22 species level taxonomy. A total number of 594 fungal species were detected by HTS including common species (224), unique species (133) and rare-species (237) in samples of starters. Unique species were recorded in phut (40 species), khekhrii (28), hamei (23), dawdim (21), chowan (13), and humao (8), respectively. Most of the fungal families were found to correlate to a type of nutritional mode and growth morphologies of the community, where saprotrophic mode of mold species were more dominant, whereas morphotypes were more dominant in yeast species.