The wine industry has implemented complex starters with multiple yeast species as an efficient method to improve certain wine properties. Strains' competitive fitness becomes essential for its use in such cases. In the present work, we studied this trait in 60 S. cerevisiae strains from different origins, co-inoculated with a S. kudriavzevii strain, and confirmed it to be associated with the strains' origin. To gather deeper knowledge about the characteristics of strains with highly competitive ability versus the rest, microfermentations using representative strains from each group were performed and the carbon and nitrogen sources uptake was analysed. Our results demonstrate that despite wine strains being the subclade with the highest competitive ability, they present a wide range of behaviors as well as nutrient uptake dynamics, which points to a heterogeneous nature of domestication processes. An interesting strategy was observed in the highly competitive strains (GRE and QA23), the nitrogen sources uptake in the competition was accelerated and the sugar fermentation was slowing despite the fermentation finish at the same time. Therefore, this competition study, using particular combinations of strains, expands the knowledge in the field of the usage of mixed starters in wine manufactured products.
Keywords: Competition; Fitness; Nitrogen uptake; Saccharomyces species; Wine fermentation; Yeasts biodiversity.
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