A comparative study of the wine fermentation performance of Saccharomyces paradoxus under different nitrogen concentrations and glucose/fructose ratios

8 pages, 1 figure, 4 tables.-- Online version published: May 2009.-- The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com

[Aims]: The main goal of the present study is to determine the effects of different nitrogen concentrations and glucose/fructose ratios on the fermentation performance of Saccharomyces paradoxus, a nonconventional species used for winemaking.

[Methods and Results]: Ethanol yield, residual sugar concentration, as well as glycerol and acetic acid production were determined for diverse wine fermentations conducted by S. paradoxus. Experiments were also carried out with a commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine strain used as control. The values obtained were compared to test significant differences by means of a factorial anova and the Scheffé test. Our results show that S. paradoxus strain was able to complete the fermentation even in the nonoptimal conditions of low nitrogen content and high fructose concentration. In addition, the S. paradoxus strain showed significant higher glycerol synthesis and lower acetic acid production than S. cerevisiae in media enriched with nitrogen, as well as a lower, but not significant, ethanol yield.

[Conclusions]: The response of S. paradoxus was different with respect to the commercial S. cerevisiae strain, especially to glycerol and acetic acid synthesis.

[Significance and Impact of the Study]: The present study has an important implication for the implementation of S. paradoxus strains as new wine yeast starters exhibiting interesting enological properties.

This work was funded by Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (grant number 178-0580477-2130) and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) (projects AGL2006-12703-CO2-01/ALI and 02/ALI). F.N. Arroyo-López (‘Juan de la Cierva’ program) and Sandi Orlić, thank to the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain (MEC) for their respective postdoctoral research contracts.

Peer reviewed