Microbiomic Prospects in Fermented Food and Beverage Technology

Abstract

Fermentation allows production of healthy, preservable, and nutritious foodstuff and beverages, such as respective dairy and meat products, vegetables (pickles) and olives, beer, and wine, where a wide array of microbiota, both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, participate simultaneously or successively, creating distinct though multiple growth and developmental dynamics in terms of succession and prevalence of different genders of cellular microbiota, during and after fermentation. Genomic methodology reveals and elucidates the diversity of similar populations in different localities, enabling a more qualitative marketing of products. Simultaneously, spoilage and pathogenic microbial taxa contaminate and degrade fermented foodstuff, adversely affecting quality, shelf-life, and safety of the final product, which can be stratified by genomic and metabolomic approaches to further detail than hitherto. The positive or negative interactions of productive and counterproductive taxa within these microbiomes and their cumulative effect define the success of the process in terms of marketing efficiency, thus establishing practices of using either indigenous microbiota or added starter cultures, each with different effects on quality, sensory characteristics, storability, and safety. © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.