Other Fermentations

Abstract

Fermented foods are staples for numerous consumers in many countries, especially in developing and emerging countries (DEC) where fermentation is often the only way to preserve food from microbial contaminations. Fermented foods from DEC are characterized by their wide diversity: they differ in the starting material (cereals, pulses, roots, vegetables, etc.), technology of production and the main microorganisms implicated in the fermentation process (lactic or acetic acid bacteria, yeasts, etc.). For cash crops like cocoa and coffee, fermentation is also an important step in the processing of cocoa beans and coffee cherries. Compared to their large diversity, very few DEC fermentations were investigated using culture-independent methods. Mexican pozol and Korean kimchi can be considered model fermented foods for cereals and vegetables, respectively, to which culture-independent methods were applied for the first time. These techniques were also applied to other starchy foods, such as cassava dough, and more recently to investigate the microbial ecology of "rice black-vinegar" in Japan, cocoa and coffee fermentations. Such novel approaches are expected to improve the knowledge of the microbiology associated to these particular fermented foods.