Spatial and temporal changes in the microbial community in an anaerobic swine waste treatment lagoon.

Microorganisms are central to both the beneficial (organic degradation, nutrient removal, biogas production) and detrimental (odor production, pathogen contamination) effects of swine waste storage systems. In this study, both quantitative (real-time polymerase chain reaction) and qualitative (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, cloning, sequence analysis) molecular analyses were used to track spatial and temporal changes in the microbial community of swine slurry from a 0.4 ha anaerobic lagoon.