Bioactive characteristics of a semi-hard non-starter culture cheese made from raw or pasteurized sheep's milk

Vahideh Saidi; Mahmoud Sheikh-Zeinoddin; Farzad Kobarfard; Sabihe Soleimanian-Zad

doi:10.1007/s13205-020-2075-z

Bioactive characteristics of a semi-hard non-starter culture cheese made from raw or pasteurized sheep's milk

3 Biotech. 2020 Mar;10(3):85. doi: 10.1007/s13205-020-2075-z. Epub 2020 Feb 4.

Authors

Vahideh Saidi¹, Mahmoud Sheikh-Zeinoddin¹, Farzad Kobarfard², Sabihe Soleimanian-Zad^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ 1Department of Food Science and Technology, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, 84156-83111 Isfahan, Iran.
² 2Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, 11369 Tehran, Iran.
³ 3Research Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Isfahan University of Technology, 84156-83111 Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

In this study, the effect of pasteurization and use of starter cultures on physicochemical, microbiological and functional properties of a traditional Iranian semi-hard cheese (Lighvan cheese) was evaluated during stages of ripening (1, 60, 120 days). Profiles of polar metabolites were analyzed by gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS). Considerable free amino acids such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) were found in samples that have higher microbial communities i.e. raw sheep's milk without use of starter cultures and pasteurized sheep's milk cheese with co-culture. However, GABA was not found in pasteurized sheep's milk cheese without starter culture during ripening. Conclusively, the application of the starter culture could reduce the ripening time of sheep's milk cheese and could be an appropriate approach to increase the functionality of the sheep's milk cheese.

Keywords: GABA; GC–MS; Lighvan cheese; Metabolomics; Ripening.