Paper Probes Tobacco Fermentation

Source from:  tobaccoreporter.com Italy, Friday, February 2, 2007 02/06/2007

In its February issue, Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal includes a paper describing what is said to be the most comprehensive research ever undertaken into tobacco fermentation. Microbial Community Structure and Dynamics of Dark Fire-cured Tobacco Fermentation examines the chemical, physical, microbiological and biochemical aspects of tobacco fermentation. Dr Dino Parente, the head of BAT Italia's R&D Biology Department, told Tobacco Reporter that though the research had been based on the fermentation of tobaccos used in Toscano cigars, the paper provided the basis for studying any kind of tobacco fermentation, curing, ageing and storing. Furthermore, he added, it described methods and protocols for studying the microbiology of tobacco by classical or molecular methods. Dr Parente is one of the paper's eight authors, who were drawn also from the universities of Lecce and Rome, and from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. An abstract of the paper is available on the Applied and Environmental Microbiology web site http://aem.asm.org, in the February 2007 issue. Meanwhile, Dr Parente added that another paper would be published soon in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. This new paper investigates the yeast, Debaryomyces hansenii, and sheds light on its possible role in tobacco fermentation. Enditem