There are several vital and important industrial importance of fungi, which shall be enumerated briefly as under :
Industrial
Importance of Fungi
There are
several vital and important industrial
importance of fungi, which shall be enumerated briefly as under :
Natural yeasts have been employed over the
centuries in Italy and France, to
ferment fruit juices (wines) or cereal products viz., malt
(silent alcohol) in the
commercial production of various types
of world-class whiskies, rums, vodkas, brandies, gins, and the like. The
high-tech industrial manu-facturers of today largely make use of the critical
and effective pasteurization of the yeast Saccharomyces
cerevisiae.
In the
production of wine and beer, the lower temperature favours the fermentation of
yeast. Under these circumstances the organisms
(bacteria) are usually discouraged due to two major reasons, namely :
(a) acidity
of the fermentation medium, and
(b) addition
of hops that exert a mild inhibitory
action to the microorganisms.
Thus, the
fermentation invariably takes place under the anaerobic conditions thereby giving rise to the production of alcohol (i.e., ethanol).
Examples : Following are certain typical
examples of alcohols commonly used in the manufac-ture of ‘alcoholic beverages’, such as :
(i) Silent Spirits —
Spirits obtained by the fractional distilation of alcohol produced by fruit or
cereal fermentation.
(ii) Brandy — obtained from wine.
(iii) Whisky — obtained from malted cereals
(Barley).
(iv) Rum — obtained from fermented molasses (i.e., a by product from sugar-industry containing unrecoverable
sugar upto 8–10%).
The
baker, strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
are meticulously selected for their specific high production of CO2
under the aerobic parameters. In actual practice, the Baker’s Yeast is particularly manufactured for bread-making, and is available commonly as ‘dried yeast’ or ‘compressed
yeast’. These also find their abundant use as a food supplement by virtue of the fact that are fairly rich in Vitamin B variants.
There are
certain typical fungi which are
specifically important in the manufacture of cheeses.
Example : The mould Penicillium roqueforti is usually employed in the production
of the blue-veined cheeses. In
actual practice, the spores of the
fungus are normally used to inoculate the cheese, that is subsequently ‘ripened’
at 9°C in order to discourage the very growth of organisms other than the Penicillium. Because, the moulds happen
to be of aerobic nature, adequate perforations are carefully made in
the main bulk of the cheese so as to allow the passage of air to gain entry.
However, the decomposition of fat takes place to impart these cheeses a characteristic flavour.
Interestingly,
the mould Penicillium comemberti
grows very much on the surface of the
cheese, and develops inwards producing the characteristic liquefaction and
softening of the surface, i.e., in
contrast to the aforesaid P. roqueforti
that grows within the body of the cheese.
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