• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.1444-1452
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• 2007

An in vitro experiment was conducted to evaluate the differences in microbial activity of five faecal inocula from weaned pigs and one faecal inoculum from unweaned pigs in combination with 6 substrates. The substrates tested were negative control diet, corn, soybean meal, oligofructose (OF), ground chicory roots and a mixture (60% chicory pulp and 40% OF). The inocula used were derived from pigs fed either a corn-soy based diet without antibiotics (NCON), the NCON diet supplemented with oligofructose (OF), a mixture of chicory pulp (40%) and OF (60%) (MIX), ground chicory roots (CHR) or the NCON diet supplemented with antibiotics (PCON). The cumulative gas production measured fermentation kinetics and end products, such as total gas production, ammonia and volatile fatty acids, were also determined. Both the substrate and the inoculum significantly affected the fermentation characteristics. The cumulative gas production curve showed that different substrates caused more differences in traits of fermentation kinetics than the different inocula. Inocula of weaned pigs gave a significantly higher VFA production compared to the inoculum from unweaned animals, whilst the rate of fermentation and the total gas produced did not differ. OF showed the highest fermentation kinetics and the lowest $NH_3$, pH and OM loss compared to other substrates. It was concluded that the microbial activity was significantly affected by substrate and inoculum. Inoculum from weaned pigs had more potential for microbial fermentation of the carbohydrate ingredients and oligofructose than that of unweaned pigs. A combination of high and low polymer inulin may be more beneficial to the gut ecosystem than using high- or low-polymer inulin alone.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.213-221
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• 2019

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been widely used to valorize food waste (FW) because of its ability to convert organic carbon into $CH_4$ and $CO_2$. Korean FW has a high content of fruits and vegetables, and efficient hydrolysis of less biodegradable fibers is critical for its complete stabilization by AD. This study examined the digestates from different anaerobic digesters, namely Rs, Rr, and Rm, as the inocula for the AD of vegetable waste (VW) and cellulose (CL): Rs inoculated with anaerobic sludge from an AD plant, Rr inoculated with rumen fluid, and Rm inoculated with anaerobic sludge and augmented with rumen fluid. A total of six conditions ($3\;inocula{\times}2\;substrates$) were tested in serial subcultures. Biogas yield was higher in the runs inoculated with Rm than in the other runs for both VW (up to 1.10 L/g VS added) and CL (up to 1.05 L/g VS added), and so was biogas production rate. The inocula had different microbial community structures, and both substrate type and inoculum source had a significant effect on the formation and development of microbial community structures in the subcultures. The overall results suggest that the bioaugmentation with rumen microbial consortium has good potential to enhance the anaerobic biodegradability of VW, and thereby can help more efficiently digest high fiber-content Korean FW.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.57-65
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• 1999

Generation of gaseous ammonia has been a major problem in composting facilities. Microbial inocula. KMT-199(brand name: CompoBac$^{TM}$). was developed in INBI0NET CORPORATION and tested in the field for its ammonia reducing capability. When KMT-199 was applied. a ten-fold increase of mesophilic and thermophilic microorganisms was observed during the early stage of composting process. Also. the temperature and pH of early stage compost increased at a higher rate when compared to control. KMT-199 treated compost reached highest temperature of $75^{\circ}C$at day 9, indicating treatment could shift the maximum composting temperature to 3 days earlier The highest temperature also reached $3^{\circ}C$ higher than the control. The pH of compost gradually increased during composting. KMT-199 treated compost reached a plateau of pH 9.32 at day 15 after treatment, and then slowly decreased thereafter. On the other hand. pH of the control steadily increased until day 38 of composting. 29% reduction of gaseous ammonia generation during composting was observed compared to that of the control. KMT-199 amended compost resulted in a higher germination rate of radish seeds than the control. These results indicate that application of microbial inocula facilitates degradation of organic materials, including ammonia during the composting process.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.437-443
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• 2003

Bioremediation technologies were applied to experimental microcosms, simulating an oil spill in a lower intertidal area. Three treatments (oil only, oil plus nutrients, and oil plus nutrients and microbial inocula) were applied, and each microcosm was repeatedly filled and eluted with seawater every 12 h to simulate tidal cycles. To minimize washing-out of the inoculum by the tidal cycles, microbial cells were primarily immobilized on diatomaceous earth before they were applied to the oiled sand. Oil degradation was monitored by gravimetric measurements, thin layer chromatography/flame ionization detector (TLC/FID) analysis, and gas chromatography (GC) analysis, and the loss of oil content was normalized to sand mass or nor-hopane. When the data were normalized to sand mass, no consistent differences were detected between nutrient-amended and nutrient/inoculum-amended microcosms, although both differed from the oil-only microcosm in respect of oil removal rate by a factor of 4 to 14. However, the data relative to nor-hopane showed a significant treatment difference between the nutrient-amended and nutrient/inoculum-treated microcosms, especially in the early phase of the treatment. The accelerating effect of inoculum treatment has hardly been reported in studies of oil bioremediation in the Tower intertidal area. The inoculum immobilized on diatomaceous earth seemed to be a very effective formulation for retaining microbial cells in association with the sand. Results of this study also suggest that interpretation of the effectiveness of bioremediation could be dependent on the selection of monitoring methods, and consequently the application of various analytical methods in combination could be a solution to overcome the limitations of oil bioremediation monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.266-274
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• 2000

Understanding of microbial community structure in soil-root system is necessary to use beneficial soil and rhizosphere microbes for improvement of crop production and biocontrol. The knowledge of behavior and function of microbes in soil-root system plays a key role for the application of beneficial inocula. Because the majority of the intact bacteria in soil are unable to grow on nutrient media, both culturable and nonculturable bacteria have to be studied together. In our study, culture-independent survey of bacterial community in the soil-root system of red pepper fields was conducted by the sequence analysis of three universal clone libraries of genes which code for small-subunit rRNA (rDNA). Universal small subunit rRNA primers were used to amplify DNA extracted from each sample and PCR products were cloned into pGEM-T. Out of 27 clones sequenced, 25 clones were from domain bacteria. Two of the rDNA sequences were derived from eukaryotic organelles. Within the domain bacteria, several kingdoms were represented : the Proteobacteria (16 clones). Cytophyga-Flexibacter-Bacteroides group (2 clones). the high G+C content gram-positive group(1 clone) and 4 unknown clones.