Abstract
Robiola di Roccaverano is an artisanal Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) soft cheese made with raw goat’s milk and by the addition of Natural Milk Culture (NMC) to drive the fermentation process. Cheeses collected from five different dairy plants were analyzed for their bacterial and fungal microbiota diversity. Lactococcus lactis and Leuconostoc mesenteroides were the main bacterial population, while Galactomyces candidum and Kluyveromyces marxianus constituted the core mycobiota but many other minor taxa were observed, suggesting a high level of complexity in fungal composition by these cheeses compared to bacteria population.
Highlights
Robiola di Roccaverano is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) soft cheese produced with raw goat’s milk, in the Roccaverano area of the Piedmont region (North–West Italy) by a consortium of 15 dairies following strict procedural guidelines
The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A) showed that cheese samples were grouped according to the dairy plants, and no separation was observed between 5- and 15-day ripened cheese collected from the same dairy plant (Figure 1B)
Amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) shared across different cheese type and dairy plant were analyzed by a Venn diagram analysis in order to detect unique ASVs or shared ones (Figure 3)
Summary
Robiola di Roccaverano is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) soft cheese produced with raw goat’s milk, in the Roccaverano area of the Piedmont region (North–West Italy) by a consortium of 15 dairies following strict procedural guidelines. During the cheese manufacturing process, raw milk from two subsequent milking sessions (evening and morning) is inoculated with Natural Milk Cultures (NMCs), obtained by back-slopping process in which the previous days’ fermented material is inoculated into the fresh milk to start the production process. During the production of Robiola di Roccaverano, the cheesemakers naturally select the best performing NMC that are well adapted to the dairy environment, able to ensure reproducibility and standardization of the final product without losing its typicality. The sensory characteristics of Robiola di Roccaverano are highly influenced by the action of the microorganism deriving from raw milk and NMC (Biolcati et al, 2019, 2020, 2021), as well as by contaminating microorganisms often deriving from sources such as operators, dairy equipment, and environment (Montel et al, 2014). The fungal composition of the dairy products, commonly referred to as mycobiota, could strongly influence the composition of the final cheese and must be considered for a better characterization of PDO cheese
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