Prawn microbial communities Metagenome. food metagenome

The wild prawn industry in Australia covers a wide geographical range with a variety of species and environmental conditions. There is some anecdotal evidence that different supply chains produce prawns of varying quality at the point of sale. Our goal was to determine the composition of the spoilage communities found on prawns in different supply chains as part of a project to investigate the effects of processing and storage on quality and spoilage. This information could be used to determine whether particular processing practices influenced the rate of spoilage or whether different species of prawn caught in different geographical locations were more susceptible to bacterial spoilage.