Winemaking is one of the oldest biotechnology techniques in the world. The wine industry generates 20 million tons of by-products, such as wastewater, stalk, lees, pomace, and stems, each year. The objective of this research project is to valorize wine industry by-products by producing a functional beverage via the fermentation of grape pomace with the kombucha consortium. In this study, grape pomace kombucha was produced under different conditions, and the concentration of the added sucrose in addition to the fermentation duration and temperature were varied. Overall, fermentation was characterized by the consumption of sugars and the production of organic acids and ethanol. An improvement in the concentrations of the total polyphenols and anthocyanins was observed in the developed product (i.e., up to 100%). Moreover, an enhancement of the antioxidant potential by 100%, as well as increases of 50 to 75% in the anti-inflammatory and antidiabetic activities, was noted.
Apple juice is one of the most consumed fruit juices in the world. Raw apple juice is viscous, turbid, and brown in color and contains several spoilage microorganisms. These are the reasons behind the application of several steps of clarification and stabilization prior to juice commercialization. Thermal pasteurization remains the most used process for apple juice microbial stabilization, but it damages its organoleptic and nutritional characteristics. Juice settling used for clarification does not allow the achievement of the desired level of clarification. Therefore, this article provides a comprehensive and bibliometric review of all the alternative treatments for thermal pasteurization in order to reduce microorganisms and patulin levels such as pulsed electric fields, microwave processing, high hydrostatic pressure, ultrasonication, etc., and their effect on apple juice characteristics as well as the techniques used for apple juice clarification.
Actinobacteria are well known for their production of metabolites of interest. They have been previously studied to identify new antibiotics in medical research and for their ability to stimulate plant growth in agronomic research. Actinobacteria represents a real source of potential biocontrol agents (BCAs) today. With the aim of reducing the use of phytosanitary products by 50% with the different Ecophyto plans, a possible application is the fight against mycotoxin-producing fungi in food matrices and crops using BCAs. To deal with this problem, the use of actinobacteria, notably belonging to the Streptomyces genus, or their specialized metabolites seems to be a solution. In this review, we focused on the impact of actinobacteria or their metabolites on the development of mycotoxigenic fungi and mycotoxin production on the one hand, and on the other hand on their ability to detoxify food matrices contaminated by mycotoxins.