Examining the Fungus in Dried Bombay-Duck (Harpadon nehereus)

The objective of the study was to identify fungus from traditional sun-dried Bombay-duck ( Harpadon nehereus ) from the retail market of West Bengal, India. Data statistics of ITS sequencing using Illumina’s MiSeq platform (72,696,374 bases and 3437 OTUs) were generated. ITS amplicon analysis of 69 sun-dried Bombay-duck muscle samples revealed that Aspergillus penicillioides to be the most abundant species (87.71%), followed by the Wallemia genus (8.25%), Byssochlamys spectabilis (1.97%), Malassezia globose (1.17%), and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (0.8%). Phylum-Ascomycota (90.58%); Class-Eurotiomycetes (89.14%); Order-Eurotiales (89.14%), and Family-Aspergillaceae (87.16%) were the most abundant taxonomy identified in the sample.