ANTONIE VAN LEEUWENHOEK INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GENERAL AND MOLECULAR MICROBIOLOGY, cilt.117, ss.1-18, 2024 (SCI-Expanded)
Kars
Kashar cheese is an artisanal pastafilata type cheese and geographically marked
in Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. The aims of this research were to determine for
the first time thermophilic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) of Kars Kashar cheese
and characterize the technological properties of obtained isolates. In our
research, a number of 15 samples of whey were collected from the different
villages in Kars. These samples were incubated at 45 °C
and used as the source material for isolating thermophilic LAB. A total of 250
colonies were isolated from thermophilic whey, and 217 of them were determined
to be presumptive LAB based on their Gram staining and catalase test. A total
of 170 isolates were characterized by their phenotypic properties and
identified using the MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry method. Phenotypic identification
of isolates displayed that Enterococcus and Lactobacillus were the predominant microbiota. According to MALDI-TOF MS
identification, 89 isolates were identified as Enterococcus (52.35%), 57 isolates as Lactobacillus (33.53%), 23 isolates as Streptococcus (13.53%), and one isolate as Lactococcus (0.59%). All thermophilic LAB isolates were successfully
identified to the species level and it has been observed that MALDI-TOF MS can
be successfully used for the identification of selected LAB. The acidification
and proteolytic activities of the isolated thermophilic LAB were examined, and
the isolates designated for use as starter cultures were also genotypically defined.