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During milk coagulation, lactic acid bacteria such as Lactococcus lactis acidify curd by metabolizing the lactose into lactate. Then, at the beginning of the ripening process, acid-tolerant yeasts (Debaryomyces hansenii, Geotrichum candidum, Kluyveromyces sp. and Yarrowia lipolytica) dominate the surface and metabolize lactate ( Corsetti et al., 2001, Mounier et al., 2005 and Larpin et al., 2006).
This utilization leads to the deacidification of the cheese surface,
allowing the development of less acid-tolerant, aerobic or facultative
anaerobic, catalase-positive, halo-tolerant Gram-positive bacteria.
Bacteria such as Brevibacterium aurantiacum, Corynebacterium, Arthrobacter and Staphylococcus spp.
are the most common species found on the cheese surface and play a role
during the ripening step in terms of aroma compounds and color
development of smear surface-ripened cheese ( Corsetti et al., 2001, Brennan et al., 2002, Rea et al., 2007, Goerges et al., 2008 and Mounier et al., 2005).
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