Report of eight unrecorded Acetobacter species in Korea, discovered during the survey in 2018-2019

Acetic acid bacteria (AAB) convert ethanol to acetic acid through oxidation, and the fermentation pathway of AAB is important in the vinegar industry. The genus Acetobacter is the representative one of AAB, and several Korean traditional vinegars are produced using Acetobacter strains. Until now, four species in the genus Acetobacter were reported as native species in Korea. During the past two years, we isolated several AAB strains from fruits, flowers and fermented foods, and several AAB species unrecorded in Korea were found on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses. In this study, we report eight Acetobacter species as native ones which are A. fabarum C10-3 (=KACC 21483) isolated from plumcot fruit (Naju-si), A. lovaniensis KDG-EC1 (=KACC 22697) isolated from diced radish kimchi (Naju-si), A. okinawensis GAM12-M2 (=KACC 22696) isolated from persimmon fruit (Sangju-si), A. orientalis FR32C4 (=KACC 22370) isolated from fruit of Cudrania tricuspidata (Jeonju-si), A. papaya FR35B3 (=KACC 22046) isolated from grape fruit (Yeongdong-gun), A. suratthaniensis GAM15-R2 (=KACC 22694) isolated from persimmon fruit(Gimje-si), A. syzygii C25-1 (=KACC 22048) isolated from peach fruit (Namwon-si) and A. thailandicus JDF1-M1 (=KACC 22693) isolated from plum fruit(Seoul).