Abstract:Traditional fermented food is a system composed of a great variety of naturally inoculated microorganisms. Understanding the mechanism of microbial spontaneous construction is the foremost to unveil and control fermentation process. Although a large amount of sequencing data is produced to determine the microbial diversity and function, the mechanism of microbial spontaneous construction is still unclear. Here, we build on the perspective that microbial communities are fundamentally distributed metabolic systems, and are driven by trophic interactions. This review expounds the concept, mechanism and research methods of trophic interaction, and summarizes the research advances and future development of trophic interactions of microbial community in traditional fermented foods. The spontaneous construction of microbial community controlled by trophic interactions is helpful to targeting control microorganisms, improve the production efficiency and quality of traditional fermented foods.