Primary study on thermophiles during pile-fermentation of Pu-er tea

Pu-er tea pile-fermentation is a high temperature process. Thermophiles during the pile-fermentation of Pu-er tea have not been reported up to now. This paper was isolated 13 thermophiles during the pile-fermentation of Pu-er. Then each strain was inoculated into the piles of Pu-er tea and simulated thermophilic pile-fermentation, with testing tea polyphenols, theaflavin, thearubigins and theabrownines. The content of theabrowin of the group added the 13 strains greatly increased to 22.73%. Six more favorable and important strains were identified by 16S rDNA sequencing. The results indicated that three belong to Bacillus, the others to Thermoactinomyces, Streptomyces, Ureibacillus, respectively.