Pit mud of Chinese liqour fermentation reactorMetagenome

Chinese liquor is produced by a solid-state fermentation process used for hundreds of years. The process is carried out in rectangular soil pits, whose walls have been layered with a fermentation mud. The age of these this layer is believed to influence final liquor quality and the microbes resident here form the inoculum for fermentation. Microbial diversity in these layers is poorly understood. This is the first report which describes a deep metagenomic sequencing based study to reveal the microbial diversity from 24 pits of varying ages, 20, 30, 50, 140, 220, 350, 400 and 440 years.