Screening for superior yeasts for fermentation of beer, wine, chocolate and tea

Fermented foods and beverages have been consumed by humans for over 8000 years. Originally, these fermentations were spontaneous processes, without any control or knowledge of the microbial driving force behind them. This led to irregular and often inferior end products. It was not until the late 19th century that scientists proposed to use a well-defined microbial starter culture, consisting of one pure yeast strain. Although this greatly increased the reproducibility of the fermentations, the main difficulty was to select a strain with all beneficial characteristics necessary for an efficient and high-quality fermentation. Until recently, the appropriate tools and knowledge were lacking to make a well-considered and scientifically found choice about which strain to pick. In some industrial foodstuff fermentations, mostly in the beer brewing industry, yeast strains are used as starter cultures because of historical rather than scientific reasons. Other important industrial fermentations, such as chocolate or tea, even still occur spontaneously. In this study, we screened a wide variety of yeast strains, which are particularly suited for industrial purposes, such as the production of beer, wine, chocolate and tea. Our high throughput screening and subsequent data analysis show an enormous geno- and phenotypic diversity among different Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. Our data allows us to rapidly select yeast strains for specific industrial purposes, and provides an excellent platform for quick selection of strains for further improvement.status: publishe