• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.75-83
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• 2016

Background: In order to evaluate the effect of pH, known as a critical factor for shaping the biogeographical microbial patterns in the studies by others, on the bacterial diversity, we selected two sites in a similar geographical location (site 1; north latitude 35.3, longitude 127.8, site 2; north latitude 35.2, longitude 129.2) and compared their soil bacterial diversity between them. The mountain soil at site 1 (Jiri National Park) represented naturally acidic but almost pollution free (pH 5.2) and that at site 2 was neutral but exposed to the pollutants due to the suburban location of a big city (pH 7.7). Methods: Metagenomic DNAs from soil bacteria were extracted and amplified by PCR with 27F/518R primers and pyrosequenced using Roche 454 GS FLX Titanium. Results: Bacterial phyla retrieved from the soil at site 1 were more diverse than those at site 2, and their bacterial compositions were quite different: Almost half of the phyla at site 1 were Proteobacteria (49 %), and the remaining phyla were attributed to 10 other phyla. By contrast, in the soil at site 2, four main phyla (Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Cyanobacteria) composed 94 %; the remainder was attributed to two other phyla. Furthermore, when bacterial composition was examined on the order level, only two Burkholderiales and Rhizobiales were found at both sites. So depending on pH, the bacterial community in soil at site 1 differed from that at site 2, and although the acidic soil of site 1 represented a non-optimal pH for bacterial growth, the bacterial diversity, evenness, and richness at this site were higher than those found in the neutral pH soil at site 2. Conclusions: These results and the indices regarding diversity, richness, and evenness examined in this study indicate that pH alone might not play a main role for bacterial diversity in soil.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.65-74
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• 2017

North Korea is one of the high vulnerable countries facing the threat of natural disaster and has experienced more frequent disasters in recent years. These disasters have significantly led to food shortages and large reductions in crop yields. In 2015, both North Korean officials and international agencies had identified the extreme drought event, the worst in one hundred years according to the North Korean government. The objective of this study was an assessment of the extreme drought events in 2014~2015, and to apply climatic drought indices for drought monitoring in North Korea. Characteristics of the extreme drought in North Korea are examined by using the weekly-based Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). The drought characteristics illustrated by the SPEI results are compared with a Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) results and drought impact information to understand how these indices can explain the drought conditions within the country. These results demonstrated that the SPEI could be an effective tool to provide improved spatial and temporal drought conditions to inform management decisions for drought policy.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.309-316
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• 2008

To develop a monitoring method for soil microbial communities in rice paddy fields, we used terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) to compare soil bacterial community structure in rice paddy fields experiencing different management practices: organic practices, conventional practices without a winter barley rotation, and conventional practices with a winter barley rotation. Restriction fragment length profiles from soils farmed using organic practices showed very different patterns from those from conventional practices with and without barley rotation. In principal component analyses, restriction fragment profiles in organic practice samples were clearly separated from those in conventional practice samples, while principal component analysis did not show a clear separation for soils farmed using conventional practices with and without barley rotation. The cluster analysis showed that the bacterial species compositions of soils under organic practices were significantly different from those under conventional practices at the 95% level, but soils under conventional practice with and without barley rotation did not significantly differ. Although the loadings from principal component analyses and the Ribosomal DNA Project II databases suggested candidate species important for soils under organic farming practices, it was very difficult to get detailed bacterial species information from terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. Rank-abundance diagrams and diversity indices showed that restriction fragment peaks under organic farming showed high Pielou's Evenness Index and the reciprocal of Simpson Index suggesting high bacterial diversity in organically farmed soils.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.625-633
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• 2011

A long-term water quality monitoring in the Han River Basin reveals a consistent increasing trend for the concentration of refractory organic matter (R-OM) in major monitoring sites of the watershed. Because the determination of R-OM concentrations typically requires a long time of microbial incubation, it is essential to present the estimation indices for R-OM for an efficient watershed management. In this study, a number of surface water samples were classified into three groups, each of which were collected from Lake Paldang, rivers at rain and non-rain events, respectively. The corresponding R-OM concentrations were correlated with biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and total organic carbon (TOC) concentrations as well as ultraviolet and fluorescence intensities of the filtered samples. Among the traditional organic matter parameters, TOC exhibited the highest correlation coefficient with the R-OM concentrations regardless of the types of the sample groups. The equations for conversing TOC into R-OM concentrations were finally suggested as $0.43{\times}TOC+1.12$, $0.44{\times}TOC+0.61$, $0.24{\times}TOC+1.28$ for river samples at rain and non-rain events, and lake samples, respectively. TOC-BOD(C), the values of the TOC concentrations subtracted by carbon-converted BOD concentrations, was a good index for estimating the absolute concentrations of R-OM. UV absorbance at 254 nm was well correlated with R-OM concentrations of river samples while fluorescence intensities at 350 nm showed an excellent relationship with R-OM concentration of the lake samples. Our results suggests that simple spectroscopic parameters could be applied for in-situ monitoring tool techniques in watersheds.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.162-167
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• 1999

Integration of microbial antagonists with fungicides was tried to control the gray mold caused by Botrytis cinerea on pepper in greenhouse conditions and to reduce fungicide uses. All of the selected bacterial antagonists, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens BL3, Paenibacillus polymyxa BL4, and Pseudomonas putida Cha94, completely inhibited the conidial germination of B. cinerea until 30 days after treatment. However, bacterial colonization of pepper phylloplane was poor in BL4, while the other bacterial isolates and the fungal antagonist Trichoderma harzianum TM colonized well on the phylloplane, maintaining the population density of 104-105 cfu/g until 15 days after microbial treatments. Out of 13 kinds of selected fungicides used for gray mold diseases, polyoxin B and BKF 1995 showed the most discriminatory activity on the fungal growth between B. cinerea and TM. TM grew readily on the media containing those fungicides, while B. cinerea showed poor or no mycelial growth on them. The selected fungicides and antagonists alone reduced incidence of gray mold on pepper, showing disease indices of about 2.4 to 3.0, while its was increased up to 4.2 in the untreated control. Alternate treatments with the antagonists and 2-fold diluted fungicides inhibited the disease incidence as much as the antagonists or fungicides alone, and reduced the secondary inoculum more than the single treatments. This suggests that integration of antagonists and fungicides may be an efficient way to reduce fungicide sprays with reliable control efficacy of the disease. However, there was not much difference in the early and mid-term disease progress among the treatments and the untreated control, probably due to extremely favorable environmental conditions for the disease development in this experiment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.592-596
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• 2000

This study was carried out investigate the effect of sepiae as on the kimchi ferentation. Quality indices were pH, titratable acidity, reducing sugar content, microbial counts, and redness kimchi juice. Sepiae as retarded the decreasing rate of pH and the increasing rate of titratable acidity in kimchi during fermentation at 1$0^{\circ}C$, and the effect was more conspicouous at 1.5% than at 0.5%. Kimchi added with 1.5% sepiae as maintained a similar pH and titratable acidity after 5 days. Microbial counts of total and lactic bacteria were higher in sepiae os added kimchi than control control. Regardless of the of sepoae os, the redness of kimchi juice was gradually increased during storage.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.1205-1212
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• 2018

Objective: The aim of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of different dietary ratio of metabolizable glucose (MG) to metabolizable protein (MP) on growth performance, blood metabolites, rumen fermentation parameters and the ruminal microbial community of 8 to 10-month-old heifers. Methods: A total of 24 Holstein heifers weighing an average of 282.90 kg (8 month of age) were randomly assigned to four groups of six. The heifers were fed one of four diets of different dietary MG/MP (0.97, 1.07, 1.13, and 1.26). Results: The results showed that the ratio of MG/MP affected the growth performance, blood metabolites, rumen fermentation parameters and the ruminal microbial community of heifers. The average daily gain of heifers was enhanced by increasing the ratio of MG/MP (p<0.05). The concentration of blood urea nitrogen, cholesterol, and low density lipoprotein cholesterol as well as the concentration of total volatile fatty acid in the rumen fluid of heifers decreased with the improvement in the ratio of dietary MG/MP (p<0.05). However, the relative amount of Ruminococcus albus and Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens in the rumen of heifers was increased significantly (p<0.05) when the dietary MG/MP increased. At the same time, with the improvement in dietary MG/MP, the amount of Fibrobacter succinogenes increased (p = 0.08). Conclusion: A diet with an optimal ratio (1.13) of MG/MP was beneficial for the improvement of growth, rumen fermentation, dietary protein and energy utilization of 8 to 10-month-old dairy heifers in this experiment.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.63 no.3
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• pp.640-650
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• 2021

Particulate matter (PM) produced in pig houses may contain microbes which can spread by airborne transmission, and PM and microbes in PM adversely affect human and animal health. To investigate the microbiome in PM from pig houses, nine PM samples were collected in summer 2020 inside and outside of pig houses located in Jangseong-gun, Jeollanam-do Province, Korea, comprising three PM samples from within a nursery pig house (I-NPH), three samples from within a finishing pig house (I-FPH), and three samples from outside of the pig houses (O-PH). Microbiomes were analyzed using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Firmicutes was the most dominant phylum and accounted for 64.8%-97.5% of total sequences in all the samples, followed by Proteobacteria (1.4%-21.8%) and Bacteroidetes (0.3%-13.7%). In total, 31 genera were represented by > 0.3% of all sequences, and only Lactobacillus, Turicibacter, and Aerococcus differed significantly among the three PM sample types. All three genera were more abundant in the I-FPH samples than in the O-PH samples. Alpha diversity indices did not differ significantly among the three PM types, and a principal coordinate analysis suggested that overall microbial communities were similar across PM types. The concentration of PM did not significantly differ among the three PM types, and no significant correlation of PM concentration with the abundance of any potential pathogen was observed. The present study demonstrates that microbial composition in PM inside and outside of pig houses is similar, indicating that most microbe-containing PM inside pig houses leaks to the outside from where it, along with microbe-containing PM on the outside, may re-enter the pig houses. Our results may provide useful insights regarding strategies to mitigate potential risk associated with pig farming PM and pathogens in PM.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.1715-1719
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• 2004

In order to help the preservation of the unshiu orange and pear, antimicrobial paper incorporating grapefruit seed extract and zeolite was applied to pack fruits. Unshiu orange was packed in a box (24${\times}$24${\times}$22 cm) attached with antimicrobial paper and then stored respectively at l$0^{\circ}C$. Pears were wrapped individually before storage at l$0^{\circ}C$. During the storage, weight loss, pH, total acidity, soluble solid content, microbial load and decay were measured as quality indices. Steady pH increase in unshiu orange was observed to slightly decrease total acidity during the storage with little difference between the packaging treatments. The microbial loads of total aerobic bacteria, and yeast/mold counts were suppressed during storage by the antimicrobial paper packaging, which also contributed to reducing the decayed unshiu orange. Limited reduction of total aerobic bacteria and yeast/mold counts was observed only for initial storage period for the pears wrapped with 9 and 12% antimicrobial agent-added papers. Antimicrobial paper was useful for the reduction of microbial load in unshiu orange and pear without other quality deterioration.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.273-278
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• 2006

In order to help the preservation of the cherry tomato and unshiu orange, antimicrobial paper incorporating grapefruit seed extract and zeolite was applied to the package. Cherry tomato and unshiu orange were packed in a box (38x25x20 cm) attached with antimicrobial paper and then stored respectively at $5^{\circ}C$. During the storage, weight loss, pH total acidity, soluble solid content microbial load and decay ratio were measured as quality indices. pH increase in cherry tomato was observed until 20 days, and decreased with litle difference between the packaging treatments thereafter pH and total acidity decrease in unshiu orange were shown till 30 days, and abrupt change was revealed by 40 days. This was due to physiological disorders. The microbial loads of total aerobic bacteria, and yeast/mold count were suppressed during storage by the box packaging incorporated with antimicrobial agents, which also contributed to reducing the decayed cherry tomato and unshiu orange. Antimicrobial paper was useful fur the reduction of microbial load in cherry tomato and unshiu orange pear without other quality deterioration.