New Aspects of Fungal Starter Cultures for Fermented Foods

Abstract

The production of a variety of foods include a fermentation step by filamentous fungi. Nowadays these fermented foods are produced by selected fungal starter cultures instead of relying on the indigenous flora, which may contain spoilage or mycotoxinogenic strains. The most important fungal species for food fermentation are Penicillium nalgiovense for the production of mould fermented meat products, P. camemberti for the production of white cheeses and P. roqueforti for the production of blue veined cheeses. Before a fungal strain of these species can be used as a starter culture for human consumption it must fulfill several requirements. Not all strains isolated from the food environment and with characteristics suitable for starter cultures fit to these conditions. In addition also the currently used starter strains possess undesired properties. On the other hand the modem techniques of molecular biology or genetics offers various possibilities for screening, characterisation and for specific improvement of fungal strains. In this article examples for characterisation and improvement of fungal starter cultures by molecular techniques are described.