Chinese Baijiu (Chinese spirit or Chinese liquor) is one of the six major distilled spirits in the world, and is renowned overseas. Chinese Baijiu has a long history of more than 1000 years when people first begin to brew liquor using distillation. So far, Chinese Baijius have formed 12 types according to their flavour characteristics. The strong flavour Chinese spirit is regarded as one of the typical representatives, and occupies a > 70% market share in China. The liquor brewing process is under an open environment, with grains as the fermentation substrates, as well as Daqu as the saccharifying ferment. The brewing process is complex and impacted by multiple factors. Among the factors, the microorganisms have important influences on the brewing process and product quality of liquors. In the past decades, a series of research achievements have been made with strong flavour Chinese spirits. However, reviews related to this field are relatively few. In this paper, we have reviewed strong flavour Chinese spirits including the introduction, brewing process, microorganism diversity of Daqus, fermented grains and pit muds, and the application of microbes. Copyright © 2017 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling

The high incidence of diabetes mellitus has caused widespread concern around the world, and has quickly become one of the most prevalent and costly chronic diseases. Alpha-glucosidase has been considered as the main target enzyme in the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes, and the inhibition of alpha-glucosidase activity can control postprandial blood glucose levels of diabetics and keep blood glucose levels normal. However, most of the current antidiabetic drugs in the clinic have many side effects. Recently, the screening of alpha-glucosidase inhibitors, from natural products, with excellent activity and less side effects has been successfully achieved, which also proposes more requirements and challenges for the approaches of alpha-glucosidase inhibitor (AGI) screening because of the trace level of active compounds in natural products, large-scale sample screening, and complex matrix of natural products. In this review, we comprehensively summarized the available strategies for the assay of alpha-glucosidase activity and AGI screening for the first time, including classic strategies such as high throughput screening methods (e.g. capillary electrophoresis strategies, HPLC/LC-MS strategies), emerging sensing strategies (e.g. colorimetric sensing, fluorescence sensing, electrochemical sensing, and surface plasmon resonance sensing) and other strategies. Finally, future opportunities and challenges in future research are tentatively proposed.