Abstract
Microbial community succession is closely related to the corruption of meat, but there are few studies on microbial community assembly and their relationship with physicochemical indexes in meat during chilled storage (4 °C). This study aimed to investigate the mechanism of bacterial community assembly and the effect of microbial succession on quality changes during the preservation of goat meat. The results showed that the stochastic process was the primary driving mechanism during community construction. During the chilled storage, the predominant bacteria in the three groups at the genus level were Acinetobacter and Pseudomonas. With the extension of storage duration, the relative abundance of Pseudomonas in samples from local markets and slaughterhouses increased rapidly and gradually acted as dominant flora during the succession process. Spearman correlation analysis revealed that Pseudomonas exhibited a highly significant positive association with total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) and a highly significant negative correlation with redness (p < 0.01), which is crucial in the degradation of meat quality. These results provide guidance for regulating the microbial communities of goat meat during preservation by optimizing the storage conditions to delay the deterioration of goat meat.