MICROFLORA OF MURCHA - AN AMYLOLYTIC FERMENTATION STARTER

Murcha is a traditional starter, used commonly in Darjeeling hills and Sikkim in India to ferment a variety of starchy substrates in order t o produce sweet-sour alcoholic beverages, called jnards. Murcha cakes are mildly acidic (pH 5.2) and contain 13% w/w moisture and 0.7% w/w a sh (dry weight basis). A total of 194 bacterial, 190 yeast and 80 moul d strains were isolated from 30 samples of murcha. The counts (cfu/g f resh weight) of micro-organisms in the samples were 2.0 x 10(7) to 4.2 x 10(8) for Pediococcus pentosaceus, 4.0 x 10(7) to 6.8 x 10(8) for S accharomycopsis fibuligera, 2.0 x 10(6) to 7.2 x 10(7) for Pichia anom ala, 1.0 x 10(6) to 4.1 x 10(7) for Mucor circinelloides and <10 to 1. 0 x 10(6) for Rhizopus chinensis. While all the species were prevalent in 100% of the samples, R. chinensis was detected in only 50% of them . Both the moulds but one yeast species, S. fibuligera had amylolytic activity.