Additional strains acting as key microbes promoted composting process.

Abstract Microbial inoculums (MIs) were the widely used biofortification strategy in composting. However, lack of efficient MIs and unclear strengthening mechanisms might impaired the efficiency of MIs. Here, three experimental group (precise strains, commercial MI, Inoculum HJ) and one control group (untreated) were investigated to close these gaps. Adding MIs could significantly prolong the duration of thermophilic period (1.5–2.8 times), but the difference in GI, pH value, EC value and moisture content were marginal. Furthermore, it could be observed that adding Inoculum HJ could improve the degradation rate of lignocellulose and organic matters for 1.22–1.25 times. The high-throughput sequencing results showed that adding Inoculum HJ made additional genus dominant, with their relative abundance raised from 2.58 to 3.39 times. Results of network analysis showed that microbial interaction could be strengthened by adding MIs, and significantly improved composting quality. The most intensive interaction was observed in the pile with Inoculum HJ, which was 1.20 times higher than other piles. To explore how Inoculum HJ strengthened microbial interaction, module based connectivity analysis was used to distinguish key hubs. Results showed that twelve hkey OTUs in the thermophilic period were similar to additional strains’ full-length 16S rRNA gene. These results showed that additional strains behaved like the key hubs to strengthen microbial interaction in the thermophilic period. This research indicated that additional strains from the most efficient inoculum could behave as key hubs to increase the network complexity and had the potential to strengthen microbial interaction.