Monitoring of brewing yeast propagation under aerobic and anaerobic conditions employing flow cytometry

Abstract

The vitality and viability of industrial strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was monitored during pilot plant experiments simulating yeast propagation under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Industrial wort of 12°P original gravity was used as a growth substrate for yeast propagation. The work was carried out with three widely used Czech lager yeast industrial strains: strains 2, 7 and 95. Cell cycle, cell size, granularity, glycogen content, DNA and protein content were analyzed by flow cytometry. Significantly higher specific growth rates, higher content of yeast glycogen, earlier G2/M phase cells maximum, and faster cell protein creation was observed under aerobic conditions compared to anaerobic. Strains 7 and 95 showed losses in flocculation ability after aerobic propagation compared to anaerobic propagation. Under either aerobic or strictly anaerobic conditions, only strain 2 did not show a significant loss in flocculation ability. © 2007 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling.