In order to develope a culture-independent molecular marker to monitor the changes of microbial community structures in industrial sufu fermentation, samples from the fermentation prophase, the intermediate stage （primary metaphase and secondary metaphase） and the anaphase during the whole fermentation process were collected. The total DNA was extracted and the DNA fingerprints were generated by means of ERIC-PCR. The results show that （ 1 ） the samples collected from four different fermentation stages of the same batch are of the same ERIC-PCR bands at 500 and 750 bp, meaning that some microbes are active in the whole fermentation process; （2） each fermentation stage yields its unique bands; and （3） the ERIC-PCR fingerprints corresponding to the four samples weekly collected from different batches are identical, with a Sorenson pairwise similarity coefficient （Cs） varying form 59% to 100%.