this experiment was conducted to assess the effects of daytime cutting management (p.m. vs. a.m. cut), ensiling duration and adding microbial inoculants on chemical composition of alfalfa silage. for this, second growth alfalfa harvested at the early bud stage of development after a sunny day at sundown (about 1900 h; pm alfalfa), whereas the second half was cut next day at sunup (about 0800 h;...

  The effect of gamma radiation (1, 3 and 5 kGy) on microbial quality of farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) fillets which were stored under frozen conditions (-20° C) was studied by measuring microbiological changes in 5 months. Gamma irradiation and increasing of frozen storage time had significant effects (P<0.05) on the reduction of microorganism's population. The total count showed ...

Many South Africans living in resource-poor settings with little or no access to pipe-borne water still rely on rivers as alternative water sources for drinking and other purposes. The poor microbial quality of such water bodies calls for appropriate monitoring. However, routine monitoring only takes into consideration the microbial quality of the water column, and does not include monitoring o...

microbial activity and spoilage of chicken meat from the market in mashhad, iran, stored in air at 0, 4, 10 and 15°c was assessed. microbial spoilage population, total volatilebase nitrogen (tvb-n), ph and organoleptic changes were determined. based on the results of sensory analysis, shelf-life of chicken meat stored at 0, 4, 10 and 15°c was 72, 120, 220 and 320 h, respectively. tvb-n that ser...

The definition of soil quality encompasses physical, chemical and biological characteristics, and it is related to fertility and soil health. Many indicators can be used to describe soil quality, but it is important to take into account sensitivity, required time, and related properties, than can be explained. Properties related to organic matter content, such as C/N ratio, organic carbon fract...

BACKGROUND The emergence of next generation sequencing (NGS) has provided the means for rapid and high throughput sequencing and data generation at low cost, while concomitantly creating a new set of challenges. The number of available assembled microbial genomes continues to grow rapidly and their quality reflects the quality of the sequencing technology used, but also of the analysis software...

Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs), usually defined as clusters of similar 16S/18S rRNA sequences, are the most widely used basic diversity units in large-scale characterizations of microbial communities. However, it remains unclear how well the various proposed OTU clustering algorithms approximate 'true' microbial taxa. Here, we explore the ecological consistency of OTUs--based on the assumpt...