Taxonomy and Characterization of Fungi Isolated from Cocoa Beans during Fermentation in Saf’s Agroforestry System in the Amazon

Abstract

Agroforestry systems (SAFs) are an alternative for sustainable development as they enable the recovery of degraded areas and reduce deforestation, contributing to breaking the cycle of traditional family farming, so common in the Amazon region, which enables the recovery of soils, the increase of organic matter and soil fertility. Cocoa beans are grown and fermented in SAFs. According to the research, the significant appearance of endophytic microorganisms such as fungi in the cocoa bean can benefit its fermentative and cocoa production. The aim of the study was to characterize the fungi microbiota of cocoa beans during the fermentation and drying process. Fungi isolation was performed from the collected samples, and one of the applied procedures was the scraping of the dried. Afterwards, aliquots were subcultured in a Petri dish with a culture medium containing Potato dextrose ágar cultures were analyzed by counting colony-forming. DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analyses were performed to emphasize microbial characterization. The species found in this study: Geotrichum candidum and Galactomyces geotrichum are endophytic fungi. On the other hand, Ascomycota sp. and Cladosporium cladosporioides are environment fungi. However, this work contributed to the characterization of endophytic fungi.