[Contamination of dairy products by yeasts-like fungi]

Abstract

Evaluation of the degree of contamination of diary products with potentially pathogenic fungal strains. Materials for the study were: yoghurt, cottage cheese, homogenised cottage cheese, cream and buttermilk. Differentiation of species was based on their morphological features and biochemical properties (API 20 C bioMérieux). Among 300 studied diary products we have isolated 100 (33.0 +/- 2.72%) strains of yeast-like fungi. Diary products were contamined with 19 species of fungi from types: Candida, Geotrichum, Trichosporon, Saccharomyces and Rhodotorula. The highest percentage of fungi was seen in cream (95.7 +/- 4.23%), cottage cheese (87.9 +/- 5.68%) and kefir (60.0 +/- 15.5%). In other studied products the frequency ranged from 13.1 +/- 2.54% to 35.2 +/- 6.51%. Among the isolated fungi the following species prevailed: Geotrichum candidum (18.0 +/- 3.84%), Candida lusitaniae (15.0 +/- 3.57%) and C. inconspicua (11.0 +/- 3.13%).