Microbial community dispersal from wheat grains to sourdoughs: A contribution of participatory research

Understanding microbial dispersal is critical to understand the dynamics and evolution of microbial communities. However, microbial dispersal is difficult to study because of uncertainty about their vectors of migration. This applies to both microbial communities in natural and human-associated environments. Here, we studied microbial dispersal along the sourdoughs bread-making chain using a participatory research approach. Sourdough is a naturally fermented mixture of flour and water. It hosts a community of bacteria and yeasts whose origins are only partially known. We analysed the potential of wheat grains and flour to serve as an inoculum for sourdough microbial communities using 16S rDNA and ITS1 metabarcoding. First, in an experiment involving farmers, a miller and bakers, we followed the microbiota from grains to newly initiated and propagated sourdoughs. Second, we compared the microbiota of 46 sourdough samples collected everywhere in France, and of the flour used for their back-slopping. The core microbiota detected on the seeds, in the flour and in the sourdough was composed mainly of microbes known to be associated with plants and not living in sourdoughs. No sourdough yeast species were detected on grains and flours. Sourdough lactic acid bacteria were rarely found in flour. When they were, they did not have the same amplicon sequence variant (ASV) as found in the corresponding sourdough. However, the low sequencing depth for bacteria in flour did not allow us to draw definitive conclusion. Thus, our results showed that sourdough yeasts did not come from flour, and suggest that neither do sourdough LAB.