Population dynamics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae PE-2 and CAT-1 in CO-culture for the production of ethanol

Abstract

In the Brazilian industries, the inoculum used throughout the harvest of ethanol production consists of a combination of two or more yeast strains. The combination of yeasts may influence in the metabolic pathways of microorganisms and increase the yields and production rates of some compounds. In biotechnological processes with co-culture, one microorganism can prevail over the other. Therefore, the knowledge about how the population dynamics occurs during fermentation allows modifications in the process in order to obtain higher yields and to achieve greater fermentative efficiency. The aim of this study was to investigate the fermentation with synthetic sugar cane broth in co-culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains CAT-1 and PE-2 followed by molecular fermentation monitoring. The concentration of biomass, ethanol, glycerol, acetic acid and residual sucrose were monitored to verify the influence of different combinations during the fermentation. The mixture of CAT-1 and PE-2 presented the highest ethanol production, with higher performance of fermentative parameters than pure cultures