Aspergillus luchuensis (previous namesA. foetidus andA. acidus) is aspecies of fungus in thegenusAspergillus. It belongs to the group of blackAspergilli which are important industrial workhorses.[2][3][4] The fungus has been used to makeawamori, a distilled spirit inOkinawa Island,Japan,[5] and is also used to makeshōchū andsake.[6][7] This species was first isolated and described by Tamaki Inui of theUniversity of Tokyo in 1901.[1][8][9] For more than 100 years there has been confusion between this species andAspergillus awamori andAspergillus niger with regard to scientific names and classification.[10]
Thescientific name for this species is derived from "Ryukyu", the historical name for Okinawa, Japan.[10] It is authorized as a "national fungi" (国菌,kokkin) along withAspergillus oryzae,Aspergillus sojae andAspergillus kawachii by the Scientific Conference of Brewing Society Japan because it is used not only in brewing but also in a variety of foods and is useful in the lives of Japanese people.[10][11]
In 1918, Genichiro Kawachi isolated analbinomutant ofAspergillus luchuensis (blackkōji) and named itAspergillus kawachii (whitekōji). This mutant is now also calledAspergillus luchuensis mut. kawachii. Inshōchū brewing,Aspergillus oryzae (yellowkōji) was traditionally used, but black and whitekōji produced morecitric acid and were more effective in preventing microorganism growth, so the use of blackkōji was recommended from the 1940s and whitekōji from the 1950s. Brewing with each type ofkōji brings different flavors toshōchū.[6] Sake was also traditionally brewed with yellowkōji, but from the 21st century sake brewed with white or blackkōji began to appear.[7] The blackkōji variants and whitekōji that Kawachi discovered and isolated have been used inmakgeolli andsoju in Korea since the 1940s.[12][13]
Its genome has beensequenced by two different research groups, first in 2016,[14] and then in 2017.[15][16] The first sequencing of theA. luchuensis genome reported a genome assembly size of 34.7Mbp and reported the presence of 11,691 genes.
^Israel Goldberg; et al. (2006). "Organic acids: old metabolites, new themes".Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology.81 (10):1601–1611.doi:10.1002/jctb.1590.
^Osamu Yamada, Masayuki Machida, Akira Hosoyama, Masatoshi Goto, Toru Takahashi, Taiki Futagami, Youhei Yamagata, etc. (20 September 2016)."Genome sequence of Aspergillus luchuensis NBRC 4314". Oxford University Press. Archived fromthe original on 5 June 2018. Retrieved10 April 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^"Declaration"(PDF). The Scientific Conference of Brewing Society Japan. 28 November 2013. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 1 May 2022. Retrieved10 April 2023.
