Excellent Poster Presentation: “Initial Characterization of the Microbiome Associated with Lichen-like Structures in Intensive Whiteleg Shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) Ponds” at the National Biotechnology Conference 2026.

On August 7-8, 2026, the National Biotechnology Conference 2026 was held at Dong A University (Da Nang City, Vietnam), hosted by Dong A University.

The National Biotechnology Conference is an annual scientific forum aimed at strengthening connections and sharing knowledge and research results among scientists, experts, lecturers, and researchers from universities, research institutes, enterprises, and domestic and international science and technology organizations across various fields related to biotechnology. The conference featured 04 plenary presentations and 183 oral and poster presentations across 07 specialized subcommittees: Genetic Technology; Cell Technology; Biochemistry & Protein Technology; Agricultural Biotechnology; Microbial, Food and Environmental Biotechnology; Medical Biotechnology and AI Applications; and Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy.

At this conference, the Biotechnology Center of Ho Chi Minh City received 01 Excellent Poster Presentation Award in the Microbial, Food and Environmental Biotechnology subcommittee for the presentation entitled “Initial characterization of the microbiome associated with lichen-like structures in intensive whiteleg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) ponds” presented by M.Sc. Le Van Hau and co-authors. The results of this study combined conventional microbial culturing methods and shallow shotgun metagenomic sequencing to evaluate the microbial composition and the correlations among microbial communities in whiteleg shrimp ponds with the occurrence of lichen-like structures in An Thoi Dong Commune, Ho Chi Minh City. The study isolated and identified, using conventional methods, 53 Vibrio spp. strains and 32 filamentous fungal strains from six analyzed samples. The isolated strains were evaluated for genetic diversity and potential virulence genes using rep-PCR and multiplex PCR assays. Shallow shotgun metagenomic analysis on the PacBio Onso platform showed high-quality sequencing data, with Q30 rates of 86.4–93.7% and 2.55-4.27 million high-quality reads after filtering per sample. A total of 1,886 microbial species were identified, among which Proteobacteria was the dominant phylum, followed by Bacteroidota and Actinobacteriota. Microbial diversity analysis showed that the lichen-like structure samples had the highest species richness and formed a distinct group from pond water and shrimp feces samples in principal coordinates analysis (PCoA). The study provides preliminary data on the structure of microbial communities associated with the occurrence of lichen-like structures in intensive whiteleg shrimp ponds.

Fig. 1  Representatives of the author group receiving certificates for excellent poster presentations at the subcommittees.

Fig. 2 Certificate for the excellent poster presentation in the Microbial, Food and Environmental Biotechnology subcommittee.