Reducing sugar concentration was estimated by Shaffer
and Somogyi (1995)method. Ethanol and other metabolites
were determined by gas chromatography coupled with flame
ionization detector (Antony, 1984). Final cell biomass was estimated by weighing the dried yeast cells after fermentation.
The cellular viability was determined by the methylene blue
staining technique (Postgate, 1967). All the experiments were
carried out in triplicate. All data are shown as the average
values and standard deviations from three independent experiments.