title: Metagenomic assessment of the microbial diversity in ground pork products from markets in the North Central Region of South Korea.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to characterize the microbial community in ground pork using molecular approaches. Forty six ground pork products were purchased from local stores in the north central area of South Korea. Aerobic plate counts varied 4.23 ± 5.14 × 10(5) CFU/g with the range between 5.00 × 10(3) and 1.85 × 10(6) CFU/g for ground pork samples. Four ground meat samples were further processed for metagenomic analysis. Pseudomonas species was the most relative abundant with a wide range occurring (1.72 to 77.7%) as part of the microbial genera in ground pork. Bacteria such as Carnobacterium, Yersinia, Photobacterium were also identified in ground pork. Despite the prominence of certain genera across all samples there was still extensive microbial diversity among ground pork products that originated from different slaughter houses and were processed in different markets. Such diversity indicates that designing interventions to extend shelf life may be hampered by the extensive variability in the microbial consortia associated with pork products. However, this diversity may be useful for developing microbial traceability signatures unique to a slaughter house or a particular market.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Food and Nutrition , Gyeongsang National University , Jinju , Republic of Korea.|b Institute of Agriculture & Life Science, Gyeongsang National University , Jinju , Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Ok-Kyung
authors.initials: OK
authors.lastname: Koo
authors.affiliation: c Center for Food Safety, Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas , Fayetteville , Arkansas , USA.
authors.forename: Christopher A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.affiliation: d Food Safety Research Group, Korea Food Research Institute , Seongnam-si , Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Hyun-Jung
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: c Center for Food Safety, Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas , Fayetteville , Arkansas , USA.
authors.forename: Si Hong
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: c Center for Food Safety, Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas , Fayetteville , Arkansas , USA.
authors.forename: Steven C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Ricke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005516:Food Microbiology; D005522:Food Services; D056186:Metagenomics; D064307:Microbiota; D000069466:Red Meat / Q000382:microbiology*; D056910:Republic of Korea; D013552:Swine
keywords: Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis; ground pork; metagenomics; pyrosequencing