Characterization and analysis of yeast and yeastlike microorganisms in dairy products

The most important spoilage yeastsspecies of several cheese types have been isolated and identified. An important part of the project has been to improve the identificationmethods of these species, since existing methods mostly are meant for identification of patogene yeats. For this purpose a large number of relevant species was characterized by their production of volatiles, using a GC-MS method, developed in the project. The volatiles appeared to form a fingerprint of many yeast species, which is very usefull in identification. Selective and indicative identification methods for spoilage yeasts in cheese were developed.