Industrial Production and Applications of Yeast and Yeast Products

Yeast is one of the most commonly used organisms with immense applications in food and dairy industry. Yeasts are unicellular fungi that occur in the natural environment on fruits, leaves of plants, in soil and in aquatic and environments. F. Oberwinkler classified yeasts as unicellular organisms belonging to either ascomycetes or basidiomycetes group of fungi. Yeast produce larger cell size as compared to bacteria and demonstrate typical spherical, oval, elliptical or elongate cells ranging from 5–10 µm in size. Pure cultures of Brewer's yeast are commercially manufactured and supplied to the brewing industry. Brewing yeasts are traditionally classed as "top-fermenting" and "bottom-fermenting". The strains of yeast are selected for the wine production for their alcoholic fermentation capability and organoleptic qualities, such as taste, flavor, aroma, color, tannin and glycerol contents, it imparts to the product. The increasing use of yeast as a model to study eukaryotic genetics signifies the relevance of the miniscule organism.