Isolation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains producing higher levels of flavoring compounds for production of ‘‘cachaça’’ the Brazilian sugarcane spirit.

• Autor(a) principal: Vicente, Maristela de Araújo
• Data de Publicação: 2006
• Outros Autores: Fietto, Luciano Gomes, Castro, Ieso de Miranda, Santos, Ana Nery Gonçalves dos, Coutrim, Maurício Xavier, Brandão, Rogélio Lopes
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFOP
• Texto Completo: http://www.repositorio.ufop.br/handle/123456789/1166
• topic: Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Flavoring compounds; Sugar-cane spirit

In Brazil, spontaneous fermentation and open vessels are still used to produce cachac¸a (the Brazilian sugarcane spirit) and this fermentation is characterized by mixed cultures with continuous succession of yeast species. This work shows the development of a methodology for isolation of yeasts, particularly Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used in the production of cachac¸a. According to the proposed strategy, the strains were selected for their ability to adapt to stress conditions encountered during fermentation of the sugarcane juice such as high sucrose concentration; high temperatures and high alcohol concentration; for their capacity to flocculate; and for their higher fermentative ability. For strains with such characteristics, specific procedures were employed to select for 5,5,5-trifluoro-dl-leucine (TFL) and cerulenin-resistant strains, since these characteristics are related to a higher capacity of production of the flavoring compounds isoamyl alcohol and caproic acid, respectively. The effectiveness of such a selection strategy was documented. Taken together, the results obtained present the development of a new strategy to isolate yeast strains with appropriated characteristics to be used in the cachac¸a industry. Moreover, the results obtained offer an explanation for the great variability in terms of chemical composition found in products obtained even in a single distillery.