1.3.2 Yeast
Alcoholic fermentation is a process where the sugar in a substrate is converted into ethanol. The main micro-organisms responsible for the fermentations are yeasts belonging to the class Saccaromycetes in the fungal phylum Ascomycota (Rainieri & Zambonelli, 2009). Yeast has a high
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tolerance to acidity, which facilitates survival and growth in fruit juices that have pH values below the tolerance level for several other microorganisms (Jay et al., 2005). Compared to other fungi, yeasts differ by their growth as single cells instead of a mycelium. Reproduction is vegetative by fission or budding, a characteristic shared with many other fungi. Growth is possible in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions, where the former results in high growth rate, and the latter (oxygen limiting) results in a slow biomass production with energy being stored in the produced ethanol (Rainieri & Zambonelli, 2009).
The substrate for yeast metabolism is mainly monosaccharides, like glucose, fructose and mannose that are metabolised into two molecules of pyruvate in the glycolysis, also called Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway (Bai et al., 2008). The produced pyruvate is further reduced to ethanol and carbon dioxide by the enzymes pyruvate decarboxylate and alcohol dehydrogenase. The overall chemical reaction is thus: