Investigation of the effects of fermentation process and utilization of different cereal flours on the microflora of cornelian cherry tarhana

In this study, cornelian cherry tarhana, which is one of the traditional foods of Bolu, was produced by using different raw materials, with different methods and microflora of the products were determined. For this purpose, different cornelian cherry tarhana productions were done with and without fermentation application, by using buckwheat flour, hull-less barley flour and fine flour in addition to wheat flour used in traditional productions. During productions, yeast and lactic acid bacteria isolations were performed from raw materials, dough, 24., 48. and 72. hours of fermentation, first drying step and final dried product. Identification of all of the isolates were performed by MALDI-TOF/TOF MS (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight/time-of-flight mass spectrometry). Totally 231 isolates were obtained and 45.5% of them were identified at species level, 30.3% at genus level while 24.2% of the isolates could not be identified. In this research, it was found that microflora of cornelian cherry tarhana is mainly composed of yeasts. It was found that 32% of the identified yeast isolates were Hanseniaspora uvarum, 19.6% Saccharomyces cerevisiae, 18.6% Torulaspora delbrueckii, 11.3% Candida krusei, 9.3% Candida lusitaniae, 3.1% Metschnikowia pulcherrima, 2.1% Wickerhamomyces anomalus, 2.1% Candida kefyr, 1% Cyberlindnera fabianii and 1% were Candida parapsilosis. Only two lactic acid bacteria could be identified, which were given as Lactobacillus reuteri and Enterococcus. Common yeast species isolated from all of the productions were recorded as H. uvarum, S. cerevisiae, T. delbrueckii, M. pulcherrima, C. krusei and C. lusitaniae. It was observed that yeast count and species diversity were higher in the products produced with fermentation, and some different genera such as Wickerhamomyces and Pichia, and different species such as C. parapsilosis, W. anomalus and C. kefyr were identified from these products. Cornelian cherry tarhana was found to be rich in H. uvarum and S. cerevisiae species. T. delbrueckii was the only species identified from the final product in all productions with and without fermentation. As an outcome of this study, 97 indigenous yeast isolates identified at species level were obtained which could be used in different biotechnological applications and other purposes in industry.