ABSTRACT
The microbiota of dairy foods comprises mostly bacteria and, to a lesser degree, yeasts, which derive from the raw milk, the environment and the processing procedures. This complex and dynamic microbial ecosystem is cohabiting, interacting, communicating and shapes the organoleptic and physicochemical properties of the final products. For decades, the microbial ecology of dairy products has been based on the study of microbial isolates through culture-dependent techniques. However, culture-independent approaches have revolutionized the study of microbial food ecosystems. Among them, the recent application of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) coupled with the omics-based techniques facilitates a comprehensive fingerprinting of the dairy microbiome and its metabolic and functional properties. This chapter provides a broad overview of the microbiota of milk and dairy foods, as this has been described so far by both culture-dependent and -independent approaches.
