Hiroko Matsuda

The microbiological properties of Myanmar traditional fermented products were characterized using four different brands of bottled shrimp sauce products sold frequently at a large grocery market. Viable cells of these products were detected at various levels (10(2)-10(5) cfu/ml) using de Man, Rogosa and Sharpe (MRS) agar medium containing 10% NaCl, and all isolates from the product samples were identified as the halophilic lactic acid bacterium Tetragenococcus muriaticus by 16S rRNA gene analysis. On the other hand, culture-independent bacterial analysis using a combination of clone library analysis and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis targeting the 16S rRNA gene demonstrated that these bacterial communities can be classified into three types. In two shrimp sauce products, a strictly anaerobic non-spore-forming halophile belonging to the genus Halanaerobium was detected as the dominant bacterium. In one shrimp sauce product, Tetragenococcus was the dominant genus. However, in the remaining shrimp sauce product, a number of bacterial species typically found in various environments, including the genera Geosporobacter, Sporohalobacter, Lysinibacillus, Soehngenia, and Tepidiphilus, were detected. These findings suggest that typical fermentation bacterial species found in traditional fermented fishery products, such as those belonging to the genera Tetragenococcus and Halanaerobium, are also frequently found in Myanmar shrimp sauce products.