ABSTRACT
Abstract The successful manufacture of all fermented products relies on the presence, growth, and metabolism of specific microorganisms. Non fermented products generally lack the desired organoleptic qualities that are present, and that consumers expect, in the fermented products. This is because microorganisms are responsible for producing an array of metabolic end-products and textural modifications, and replicating those effects by other means is simply not possible. Starter cultures are defined as a preparation containing large numbers of variable microorganisms, which may be added to accelerate and/or improve a fermentation process. Microorganisms selected to be used as starter cultures are expected to have some characteristics such as adapting easily to raw food matrix and process, developing nutritional value and digestibility, improve safety by preservative effect and sometimes add functionality. The use of starter cultures in the food fermentation industry is widely known, such as cheese, yogurt, bread, beer and wine. In many cases, the technology has evolved from a traditional, spontaneous fermentation to a controlled industrialized process based on the use of well defined microbial strains as cultures to conduct the fermentation. Starter manufacture is one of the most important and also one of the most difficult processes in the food biotechnology. Production failures can result in heavy financial loss, as modern industries process large quantities of raw materials. Very careful attention must therefore be paid to the manufacturing technology and choice of process equipment.
