Deciphering the Association between Colonization and Microbiota Composition in the Intestine of Commercial Broilers.

is a major food safety concern and is transmitted mainly via poultry meat. We previously found that some commercial broiler farms consistently produced -negative flocks while others were consistently -positive for consecutive production cycles although the farms operated under similar management practices. We hypothesized that this difference in colonization might be associated with the gut microbiota composition. To address this, six commercial broiler farms were selected based on their status (three negative and three positive) to evaluate the microbiota differences between each farm category. For each farm on each production cycle (2-3 cycles), 40 ceca collected from five-week-old broilers were processed for microbiota analysis via 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Cecal microbiota species richness, phylogenetic diversity, community structure, and composition of -positive farms were noticeably different from those of -negative farms. , , , , and were significantly more abundant among -positive farms. In contrast, , , , , , , and were more abundant in -negative farms. , , , , , and were significantly negatively correlated with abundance. These findings suggest that specific members of cecal microbiota may influence colonization in commercial broilers and may be further explored to control in poultry.