5. Conclusion The main bacterial species found in Italian kefir grains was Lb.kefiranofaciens while D. anomala was the predominant yeast. The presence of the sub-dominant species ascribed to St. thermophilus, Lc, lactis and Acetobacter genera was also highlighted. In addition, Lc, lactis, Enterococcus sp. Bacillus sp.. A fabarum, A. lovaniensis and A. orientalis were identified as part of the cultivable community. This study further confirms the importance of the combination of culture independent and culture-dependent approaches for studying microbial diversity in food and how the combination of multiple 16s rRNA gene targets strengthens taxonomic identifica- tion by sequence-based identification approaches