Successions of bacterial community in composting cow dung wastes with or without hyperthermophilic pre-treatment

Comparative analyses of bacterial community successions in the composting materials were done for a conventional windrow post-treatment (WPOT) process with the hyperthermophilic pre-treatment (HTPRT) and simple windrow composting (SWC; without the HTPRT). Multidimensional scaling profiles based on data of terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms of the bacterial population in the samples of every 7 days composting material and analyses of the 16S rRNA gene-based clone library of the 7 and 21 days composting materials suggested that bacterial communities of the composting materials differed much between these two processes until the 35 days of composting, whereas that they were closely related to each other at the final composting stage (42 days of composting). Detailed phylogenetic analysis clarified that all WPOT clone libraries contained many clones of the lineages of aerobic bacteria (for example, bacilli). However, the most abundant clones retrieved from all SWC materials were affiliated with a clone cluster closely related to identified and classified members of the phylum Firmicutes that have strictly anaerobic metabolism pathways. From these results, we conclude that the HTPRT process contributed to easily establish an aerobic ecosystem from the early stage to the final stage of WPOT composting with plowing the materials only once a week.