Winter salad i s a kind of pickle made of different ve getables and is consumed s pecially in Khor asan Prov ince. The s pontaneous fer mentation pro cess is mainly carried out by lactic acid bacteria ( L A B ) . The aim of this study was to isolate and identify the LAB s pecies involved in winter salad fermentation at different fer mentation time intervals to introduce the native strains. In order to classify selected isolates that seemed LAB, according to preliminar y exper iments, biochemical tests were performed . Forty - five selected isolate genotypically identified based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The results show that the analysis with 16s rRNA gene sequencing could successfully identify eight species, including Pediococcus (51.1%), Lactobacillus (26.7%), Weissella (11.1%), Enterococcus (6.7%) and Leuconostoc (4.4%). Although Weissella cibaria and Lactobacillus plantarum were the predominant LAB in the early periods of winter salad fermentation, Pediococcus pentosaceus was the predominant LAB at the later periods.

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