PCR and DNA Fingerprinting Used as Quality Control in the Production of Wine Yeast Strains

Unambiguous identification of wine yeast strains has always been a prime concern for the yeast producer. Because of the increasing number of commercialized strains, novel methodologies had to be developed to identify and to certify the origin of the different strains. We present here our work on DNA fingerprinting and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as identification tools. Both methods were tested for their reproducibility and their use to study the genetic stability of more than a hundred wine yeast strains during standard industrial propagation conditions. The techniques used herein demonstrated that a wide diversity exists in the strains analyzed, as more than 95% of the profiles could be used to uniquely identify the corresponding strain.