Perspectives on the contribution of lactic acid bacteria to cheese flavor development

It has been known since the 1960s that lactic acid bacteria are essential for the development of cheese flavor. In the ensuing 50 years significant research has been directed at understanding the microbiology, genetics and biochemistry of this process. This review briefly covers the current status of cheese flavor development and then provides our vision for approaches which will enhance our understanding of this process. The long-term goal of this area of research is to enable technology (i.e. cultures and enzymes) that results in consistent rapid development of cheese variety-specific characteristic flavors.

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► This review covers current know-how on cheese flavor development.
► Proteolysis, autolysis and amino acid catabolism by lactic acid bacteria are discussed.
► Systems biology approaches will drive future technology improvements.
► Next-generation sequencing holds promise for fast increase in exploitable knowledge.
► Culture heterogeneity may be significant for industrial flavor production by LAB.