Succession of bacterial community in duck bio-bed over time

Abstract:

[Objective] This study aimed to character the succession of bacterial community in the litter during the fermentation of duck bio-bed. [Methods] The experiment was conducted in one meat duck bio-bed farm of Jiangsu province. The new litter (D0), used litter from 4th (D4), 8th (D8) meat duck flock and feces from duck at 34 d age were sampled. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), 16S rRNA gene sequencing and quantitative real-time PCR were used to monitor the composition changes of microbiota in the bio-bed. [Results] DGGE profiles showed that, the similarity between D4 and D8 was 81.93%, which was significantly higher than the similarity between D4, D8 and D0 (68.81% and 70.82%, respectively) (P<0.05). Bands 6 and 8 (the closest relatives: Leqionella tunisiensis and Pedobacter bauzanensis, respectively) were dominant in all litter samples. Band 10 (the closest relative: Rummeliibacillus suwonesis) was only dominant in used litters. Bands 12 and 13 (the closest relatives: Psychrobacter sp. PRwf-1, Iamia majanohamensis, respectively) commonly presented in all litters and feces. Real-time PCR results showed that the number of Escherichia coli in duck feces was significantly higher than that in D4 and D8 litters (P<0.05), while no significant difference was observed between duck feces and D0 litter (P>0.05). [Conclusion] Both the application time of bio-bed and duck feces origin microorganisms can affect the bacterial community and the number of E. coli in the bio-bed, and the bacterial community structure tends to be stable in line with the application time of the bio-bed.