Environmental parameters and microbial community profiles as indication towards microbial activities and diversity in aquaponic system compartments

BMC Microbiology

article

Schmautz, Zala¹  Espinal, Carlos A.¹  Bohny, Andrea M.²  Rezzonico, Fabio³  Junge, Ranka¹  Frossard, Emmanuel²  Smits, Theo H. M.³ 

[1] Ecological Engineering Centre, Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Zurich University of Applied Sciences;Group of Plant Nutrition, Institute of Agricultural Sciences;Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Research Group, Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Zurich University of Applied Sciences

关键词: Aquaponics;    Chemical analysis;    Community analysis;    Archaea;    Bacteria;    T-RFLP;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12866-020-02075-0

学科分类：放射科、核医学、医学影像

来源: BioMed Central

【 摘 要 】

An aquaponic system couples cultivation of plants and fish in the same aqueous medium. The system consists of interconnected compartments for fish rearing and plant production, as well as for water filtration, with all compartments hosting diverse microbial communities, which interact within the system. Due to the design, function and operation mode of the individual compartments, each of them exhibits unique biotic and abiotic conditions. Elucidating how these conditions shape microbial communities is useful in understanding how these compartments may affect the quality of the water, in which plants and fish are cultured. We investigated the possible relationships between microbial communities from biofilms and water quality parameters in different compartments of the aquaponic system. Biofilm samples were analyzed by total community profiling for bacterial and archaeal communities. The results implied that the oxygen levels could largely explain the main differences in abiotic parameters and microbial communities in each compartment of the system. Aerobic system compartments are highly biodiverse and work mostly as a nitrifying biofilter, whereas biofilms in the anaerobic compartments contain a less diverse community. Finally, the part of the system connecting the aerobic and anaerobic processes showed common conditions where both aerobic and anaerobic processes were observed. Different predicted microbial activities for each compartment were found to be supported by the abiotic parameters, of which the oxygen saturation, total organic carbon and total nitrogen differentiated clearly between samples from the main aerobic loop and the anaerobic compartments. The latter was also confirmed using microbial community profile analysis.

【 授权许可】

CC BY|CC0