Article Extremely Halophilic Biohydrogen Producing Microbial Communities from High-Salinity Soil and Salt Evaporation Pond Dyah Asri Handayani Taroepratjeka 1,* , Tsuyoshi Imai 2 , Prapaipid Chairattanamanokorn 3 and Alissara Reungsang 4,5,6 1 Department of Environmental Engineering, Institut Teknologi Nasional Bandung, Jawa Barat 40124, Indonesia 2 Graduate School of Sciences and Technology for Innovation, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi 755-8611, Japan;
[email protected] 3 Department of Environmental Engineering and Management, Faculty of Environment, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand;
[email protected] 4 Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Technology, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand;
[email protected] 5 Research Group for Development of Microbial Hydrogen Production Process from Biomass, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand 6 Academy of Science, Royal Society of Thailand, Bangkok 10300, Thailand * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +62-22-727-2215 Abstract: Extreme halophiles offer the advantage to save on the costs of sterilization and water for biohydrogen production from lignocellulosic waste after the pretreatment process with their ability to withstand extreme salt concentrations. This study identifies the dominant hydrogen-producing Citation: Taroepratjeka, D.A.H.; genera and species among the acclimatized, extremely halotolerant microbial communities taken Imai, T.; Chairattanamanokorn, P.; from two salt-damaged soil locations in Khon Kaen and one location from the salt evaporation Reungsang, A. Extremely Halophilic pond in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. The microbial communities’ V3–V4 regions of 16srRNA were Biohydrogen Producing Microbial analyzed using high-throughput amplicon sequencing. A total of 345 operational taxonomic units Communities from High-Salinity Soil were obtained and the high-throughput sequencing confirmed that Firmicutes was the dominant and Salt Evaporation Pond.