Cycloheximide resistance as marker for monitoring yeasts in wine fermentations

When selected yeast strains are used in wine-making, it is necessary to ens ure that the fermentation process is really conducted by the inoculated yea st. Saccharomyces cerevisiae spontaneous mutants resistant to cycloheximide (cyh(r)) were isolated from industrial strains. The mutations did not affe ct the fermentation kinetics the quality of the wines, or the viability of active dry yeast made with the mutants. By using these mutants, we develope d a fast, reliable, and economic method to monitor inoculated selected yeas t through must fermentation. The method can be recommended to the food indu stry because it is simple, and does not require sophisticated equipment or special personnel skills. We used this method to confirm the dominance of t he inoculated selected mutants during grape juice fermentation. (C) 2000 Ac ademic Press.