Unravelling Metabolic Heterogeneity of Chinese Baijiu Fermentation in Age-Gradient Vessels.

Fermentation vessels affect the characteristics of food fermentation; however, we lack an approach to identify the biomarkers indicating fermentation. In this study, we applied metabolomics and high-throughput sequencing analysis to reveal the dynamic of metabolites and microbial communities in age-gradient fermentation vessels for baijiu production. Furthermore, we identified 64 metabolites during fermentation, and 19 metabolites significantly varied among the three vessels ( p < 0.05). Moreover, the formation of these 19 metabolites were positively correlated with the core microbiota (including Aspergillus , Saccharomyces , Lactobacillus , and Bacillus ). In addition, ethyl lactate or ethyl acetate were identified as the biomarkers for indicating the metabolism among age-gradient fermentation vessels by BP-ANN (R 2 > 0.40). Therefore, this study combined the biological analysis and predictive model to identify the biomarkers indicating metabolism in different fermentation vessels, and it also provides a potential approach to assess the profiling of food fermentations.