Asaia sp., an unusual spoilage organism of fruit-flavored bottled water

A gram-negative bacillus was isolated from a batch of fruit-flavored bottled water, which had spoiled as a result of bacterial overgrowth (>10(6) CFU/ml). The spoilage organism was extremely difficult to identify phenotypically and was poorly identified as Pasturella sp. (78.7% identification profile) employing the API 20NE identification scheme, which gave the profile 5040000. Molecular identification through PCR amplification of a partial region of the 16S rRNA gene followed by direct automated sequencing of the PCR amplicon allowed identification of the organism. Due to the sequence identity (100%) between the spoilage organism and a reference strain in GenBank, the spoilage isolate was considered to be an Asaia sp., a recently described genus and member of the acetic acid bacteria. This is the first report of Asaia sp. causing spoilage of a foodstuff and highlights the benefits of molecular identification techniques based on 16S rRNA gene sequences in the identification of unusual spoilage organisms.