Metadata
MetaCheeseDB pairs each shotgun metagenome with cheese-specific and production-aware metadata to enable robust cross-study comparisons. Public sequencing repositories often include technical descriptors (platform, library layout, run accessions) but rarely provide the processing details that shape cheese microbial ecology. For this reason, we manually curated and harmonised a set of analysis-ready metadata fields focused on the cheese environment, with controlled vocabularies to reduce ambiguity and missingness.
Following is a summary table of the 18 harmonised metadata fields:
| Field | What it describes | Allowed values |
|---|---|---|
| Part of cheese | Which part of cheese was sampled | Core; Core AND rind; Rind |
| Milk source | Animal species providing the milk | Cow; Goat; Mixed; Sheep; Water buffalo; Yak |
| Animal feeding | Feeding regime of the milking animals | Forage; Pasture |
| Milk processing | Whether milk was processed before cheesemaking | Pasteurized; Raw |
| Thermisation | Mild heat treatment other than pasteurisation | Facoltative; No; Yes |
| Pasteurization | Explicit pasteurisation status | Facoltative; No; Yes |
| Skimming | Fat removal | Facoltative; No; Partially; Yes |
| Inoculation of moulds | Use of mould inoculation during production | None; Yes |
| Curd cutting | Approximate curd cutting size | Ladled; Large; Small |
| Presence of rind | Whether the cheese has a rind | Facoltative; No; Yes |
| Backslopping | Use of backslopping | No; Yes |
| Starter culture | Type of starter strategy | NWC; Selected |
| Technology of production | Broad technological class | Cooked curd; Pasta filata; Semicooked; Uncooked; Uncooked OR Semicooked |
| Coagulation method | Coagulation, rennet, alternative types | Acid; Rennet; Vegetable rennet from Cynara cardunculus; Vegetable rennet from Cynara cardunculus OR Cynara scolimus |
| Ripening period | Ripening timing | 1 to 3 months; 3 to 6 months; 6 to 9 months; Min 9 months; Variable |
| Rheological properties | Texture class | Hard; Semihard; Soft; Variable; Very hard |
| Temperature of curd processing Celsius degree | Heating regime during curd processing | Within 48; 48 to 70; 70 to 90; No heating beyond coagulation; Variable |
| Country | Country of production (as curated) | Austria; Benin; Canada; China; Denmark; France; Germany; Greece; Ireland; Italy; Mexico; Netherlands; Nigeria; Norway; Saudi Arabia; Spain; Switzerland; UK; USA |
Notes on interpretation
- “Facoltative” indicates that the feature is allowed/optional within a production disciplinary.
- Blank fields are to be considered as not available information.
- Metadata completeness varies across studies. When running comparative analyses, we recommend filtering to records with non-missing values for the fields of interest.
Reuse
You are welcome to reuse the metadata tables for research and benchmarking. If you publish analyses using MetaCheeseDB metadata, please cite the MetaCheeseDB manuscript (when will be available) and the present GitHub repository.