Exploring the Genealogy and Phenomic Divergences of Indigenous Domesticated Yeasts Cultivated by Six Ethnic Communities of Assam, India

Linking the Diversity of Yeasts Inherent in Starter Cultures to Quorum Sensing Mechanism in Ethnic Fermented Alcoholic Beverages of Northeast India

“…In the state of Tripura, production of local alcoholic drinks like gora bwtwk and chuwak are customary traditions carried out by the Kalai, Jamatia, Debbarma, and Molsom communities who conserve and perpetuate a starter culture called chowan, where the dominance of C. glabrata and W. anomalus was reported (Anupama et al, 2018;Sha et al, 2018;Majumdar, 2020). In our previous investigations (Parasar et al, 2017), we analyzed the starter cultures conserved by the Bodo, Karbi, Rabha, Mishing, Ahom, and Kachari communities of Assam. The starter culture emao/amao of the Bodo community was found to be dominated by P. burtonii, P. anomalus, and S. cerevisiae while another starter culture called thap of the Karbi community was dominated by S. cerevisiae (Parasar et al, 2017).…”

“…The indigenous communities follow their own practice of household traditional fermentation. Each community harbors unique distribution of yeast species, which have been perpetuated throughout generations (Buragohain et al, 2013;Tiwari et al, 2014;Parasar et al, 2017) and this has resulted in the variety of alcoholic beverages assorted and produced by the communities through traditional fermentation practice. In household fermentation practiced by the communities of northeast India, solid-state starter cultures in the form of "flat cakes" or "spherical balls" are prepared from starchy substances such as rice, millets, maize, or wheat that are powdered and mixed with microbial inoculum (Nath et al, 2020a).…”

“…Apart from the Asiatic region, the tradition of fermented product preparation is widespread among most of the indigenous communities belonging to different regions all over the world (Kabak and Dobson, 2011). These longstanding systems of alcoholic beverage preparation from various agricultural products with the aid of locally perpetuated fermentative agents have been in practice for generations indoctrinating indigenous knowledge system (Parasar et al, 2017;Nath et al, 2020a).…”

“…Household fermentation is recognized to be a popular practice among home brewers of indigenous communities in the entire Southeast Asia (Tsuyoshi et al, 2005) that reflect the ethnic heritage of existing communities, and northeast India is not an exception. Interestingly, in spite of a common source of ancestry of the indigenous communities of northeast India and usage of similar methods for ethnic fermentation, the diversity of yeasts perpetuated through those natural and spontaneous fermentation processes and maintained by the communities have been found to be unique (Buragohain et al, 2013;Tiwari et al, 2014;Parasar et al, 2017). Furthermore, since each community produces fermented beverage of distinct quality, the role of these genotypically diversified yeasts in both intra-and intercommunication is a question to be inquired, and their precise role in attributing quality characteristics in the final products of the fermented beverages needs to be understood.…”

Characterization of β‐Cryptoxanthin and Other Carotenoid Derivatives from Rhodotorula taiwanensis, A Novel Yeast Isolated from Traditional Starter Culture of Assam

“…To establish the molecular identity of the isolate, genomic DNA was extracted following the methodology of Xiao (2006) with optimum modifications [40] . The details of the procedure, primers used, and methodology followed is published elsewhere [41] . The sequence obtained was analyzed through a BLAST search against the non‐redundant nucleotide database and was submitted to DDBJ (Accession numbers in Table 4).…”