The impact of different Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains on microbial composition and quality of Chinese rice wine fermentations.

Chinese rice wine (CRW) is a popular fermented product in China, with complicated microbial composition and flavor compounds. To reveal the effects of different strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (N85 and XZ11) on the microbial composition in the process of brewing, metagenomic sequencing approaches were carried out to explore the dynamic changes of bacteria and fungi. Furthermore, the volatile compounds and organic acids in CRW were identified by HS-SPME/GC-MS and LC-MS at the end of the brewing. Our results indicated that different Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains could influence microbial compositions, especially affected the growth of Lactobacillus brevis and Pantoea ananatis. The changes in the microbial community structure contributed to the remarkable difference in the content of lactic acid, esters, alcohols, and aldehydes. Moreover, functional network analysis provided insights into the biological correlations between microbial species and metabolic pathways, i.e. Lactobacillus genus had negative effects on metabolic activities. This study expands the idea of improving the quality of CRW by controlling the microbiome.