Microbiota Exploitation for the Development of Innovative and High Added-Value Fermented Food

Dear Colleagues,

Fermentation of dairy products, vegetables, cereals, meat, and fish, has emerged in human history, almost concomitantly across the different continents, as a strategy for the preservation of raw materials and the production of food and beverages for times of shortage. Since then, humankind has traditionally and empirically utilized fermentation not only for preservation purposes but also for the improvement of the organoleptic properties, texture, digestibility, palatability, and safety of all sorts of food matrices. This has led to the production of a myriad of fermented products that are the result of different cultural preferences and traditions and cover about thirty percent of the human diet, regardless of geographic area and lifestyle. Nowadays, fermentation is widely employed also to enrich food and beverages with beneficial viable microorganisms and/or their metabolites in order to positively impact human health. This result can be achieved either through the exploitation of the wild microbiota naturally associated to raw materials or as the result of the inoculation of selected starters, and requires the characterization, preservation, management, and circulation of microbial diversity.

Keeping in consideration the key words “food microbiota” and “fermentation,” this Special Issue aims to collect original research papers, review articles, and short communications addressing novel and relevant findings on the applications of lactic acid bacteria, acetic acid bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi isolated from food matrices or preserved in culture collections. Of particular interest will be contributions regarding:

• the characterization, exploitation, and preservation of beneficial microbiota for fermented local-food production
• the development of high added-value and novel fermented products
• the reduction of chemical preservatives in food through the production of natural antimicrobials of microbial origin
• the production of bioactive compounds with health promoting activity

Dr. Luciana De Vero
Prof. Dr. Andrea Pulvirenti
Dr. Ilaria Mannazzu
Guest Editors

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