Constructing enriched stable consortia for enhanced fermentation of cigar tobacco leaves

Enriched microbial consortia have been proven to effectively regulate agricultural fermentation, yet their practical applications in the fermentation of cigar tobacco leaves are still limited.

In this study, three natural microbial communities collected from high-quality cigar tobacco leaves were continuously cultured in a medium made of ordinary cigar tobacco leaves to construct enriched stable consortia via the top-down approach. Then, these constructed microbiotas were inoculated into ordinary cigar tobacco leaves to test their fermentation performance.

High-throughput sequencing results indicated that after three rounds of transfer culture, three simple and stable bacterial communities were formed, dominated by Corynebacterium, Georgia, Bacillus and Enterococcus. Fermentation with the enriched consortia significantly improved the aroma quality, aroma intensity, sweetness, and aroma richness of CTLs.

This study presented a straightforward method for constructing efficient and stable microbiotas based on microbial interactions and the material properties of cigar tobacco leaves in practical production, simplifying the development of microbial consortia for CTL fermentation.