In order to phenotypically characterized Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains isolated from sorghum beer and palm wines for a possible selection of a starter culture, 30 strains were tested for killer activity, temperature resistance, ethanol tolerance, carbohydrate fermentation, enzyme profile and sorghum wort fermentation. Of the tested strains, three showed a killer profile, while four showed a neutral profile and 23 were found to be sensitive to K2 toxin. Temperatures of 40 °C and 44 °C allowed to distinguish strains into four thermal groups with only three strains may grow at 44 °C. Almost tested strains were tolerant to 5% ethanol with viability rates up to 73%. But at 10% and 15% ethanol, respectively 18 and 7 strains were tolerant. Carbohydrate fermentation revealed 13 fermentation profiles, including one typical and 12 atypical profiles. The typical profile strains (16.13% of the strains) fermented glucose, galactose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, trehalose and raffinose. Most of the strains secreted lipases (mainly esterase and esterase-lipase), proteases (mainly valine and cysteine arylamidase, chrymotrypsin) and phosphatases (mainly acid phosphatase and naphthol phosphohydrolase). On contrary, only five strains isolated from sorghum beer exhibited glucosidase activity, mainly α-glucosidase. The analyse of fermented sorghum wort revealed that fermentative performance is strain dependent. Furthermore, the Hierarchical Cluster Analysis showed that the strains were separated in three distinct clusters with the strains from sorghum beer clustered separately.
Keywords: Fermentation; Palm wine; Phenotypic diversity; Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains; Sorghum beer; Starter culture.