Whey-derived valuable products obtained by microbial fermentation

MICAELA PESCUMA; GRACIELA FONT DE VALDEZ; FERNANDA MOZZI

APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2015 vol. 99 p. 6183 - 6196

0175-7598

Abstract Whey, the main by-product of the cheese industry, isconsidered an important pollutant due to its high chemical and biologicaloxygen demand. Whey, often considered as waste, has high nutritional value and canbe used to obtain value added products although some of them need expensive enzymaticsynthesis. An economical alternative to transform whey into valuable productsis through bacterial or yeast fermentations and by accumulation during algaegrowth. Fermentative processes can be applied either to produce individualcompounds or to formulate new foods and beverages. In the first case, a considerableamount of research has been directed to obtain biofuels able to replace thosederived from petrol. In addition, the possibility of replacing petrol-derived plasticsby biodegradable polymers synthesized during bacterial fermentation of whey hasbeen sought. In addition, the ability of different organisms to producemetabolites commonly used in the food and pharmaceutical industries (i.e. lacticacid, lactobionic acid, polysaccharides, etc.) using whey as growth substrate hasbeen studied. On the other hand, new low-cost functional whey-based foods andbeverages leveraging the high nutritional quality of whey has been formulatedhighlighting the health-promoting effects of fermented whey-derived products. Thisreview aims to gather the multiple uses of whey as sustainable raw material forthe production of individual compounds, foods and beverages by microbial fermentation.This is the first work to overview the microbial transformation of whey as rawmaterial into a large repertoire of industrially relevant foods and products.