Isolation and Partial Evaluation of a Potential Indigenous Yeast Strain <i>Pichia kudriavzevii</i> from a Traditional Rice Beer—“Gora” Prepared by the Koloi Tribes of Tripura

Abstract

As per tradition from hundreds of years the Koloi tribes of Tripura are preparing “Gora”-therice based fermented beer which is very good in taste and aroma applying their traditional indigenous brewing techniques. In this study, an attempt has been made to identify the indigenous yeast which is the main causative agent for fermentation and to investigate its fermentation ability with an industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiaes train. After investigation based on culture dependent phenotypic characteristics like-staining and biochemical characterization, primarily the responsible yeast species was determined as Pichia kudriavzevii and further confirmed followed by 18S rRNA ribotyping and the sequences was deposited at Gene bank and NCBI bearing specific accession number. In the comparative analysis, it has been found a significant similarities in all aspects of nutritional and alcohol percentages with the industrial strain in laboratory condition. The alcohol percentage in the rice beer “Gora” measured 6.40 ± 0.008% v/v. The study may be the first scientific investigation of its kind about this indigenous yeast strain isolated from “Gora” of this Indo-Burma biodiversity region and may provide sufficient background and potentiality for promoting these kinds of indigenous alcoholic beverages for small scale commercialization to strengthen the rural livelihood as well as to maintain immaterial cultural heritage.