Combinations of lactic acid bacteria and yeast suitable for preparation of marine silage

Marine silage (MS) is a fish hatchery diet prepared by decomposing seaweed into cellular units and performing lactic acid fermentation. MS was first developed by using a wild-type consortium composed of a lactic acid bacterium (LAB) Lactobacillus brevis and yeasts Debaryomyces hansenii var. hansenii and Candida sp. as a fermentation starter. To further examine a suitable combination of starter microorganisms, MS was prepared with different compositions of LAB and yeasts from a substrate of Undaria pinnatifida. Production efficiency of algal single cell units was not different among the trials. Inoculation of LAB significantly retarded the growth of contaminant microorganisms while a single inoculation of yeasts could not retard the growth of halophilic contaminant microorganisms. Lactobacillus brevis showed the highest predominating ability in MS among the tested, while L. acidophilus (casei-type) IAM 10074 and L. plantarum IAM12477(T) also showed predominating ability with relatively inferior scores when analyzed from the results of the identification with 16S rRNA-targeted species-specific primers. The present study demonstrated that a single use of LAB, including food industry-familiar species, is suitable for preparation of MS, while the superiority of L. brevis B5201 was suggested in predominating ability in marine silage.