Identification of dairy lactic acid bacteria by tRNAAla-23S rDNA-RFLP

► tRNAAla-23S rDNA-RFLP was evaluated in dairy LAB ecosystem identification. ► The method was compared with P1 RAPD and (GTG)5 rep-PCR on a reference database. ► tRNAAla-23S rDNA-RFLP performed best to group strains belonging to the same species. ► rDNA-RFLP was able to measure species composition on a Grana Padano isolates set. ► tRNAAla-23S rDNA-RFLP is a promising method for species identification of dairy LAB.