DAIRYdb: a manually curated reference database for improved taxonomy annotation of 16S rRNA gene sequences from dairy products.

We provide a manually curated database composed of 10'290 full-length 16S rRNA gene sequences from prokaryotes tailored for dairy products analysis ( https://github.com/marcomeola/DAIRYdb ). The performance of the DAIRYdb was compared with the universal databases Silva, LTP, RDP and Greengenes. The DAIRYdb significantly outperformed all other databases independently of the classification algorithm by enabling higher accurate taxonomy annotation down to the species rank. The DAIRYdb accurately annotates over 90% of the sequences of either single or paired hypervariable regions automatically. The manually curated DAIRYdb strongly improves taxonomic annotation accuracy for microbiome studies in dairy environments. The DAIRYdb is a practical solution that enables automatization of this key step, thus facilitating the routine application of NGS microbiome analyses for microbial ecology studies and diagnostics in dairy products.