BB-rel@ldeleger:BB-rel-F-20167385-011 JSONTXT

Regarding the lactic acid bacterial group (LAB), Lactobacillus was seen to be present in different numbers depending of the cheese surface. Dolci et al. (2009) detected Lactobacillus counts of 105–107 CFU/cm2 on Fontina cheese surface after 90 days of ripening and Cocolin et al. (2009) reported that lactococci and lactobacilli, dominated the microbial ecology of Gorgonzola rind. Our results showed that the species L. curvatus for example was only isolated from Taleggio rind and L. brevis was isolated from the surface of Gorgonzola and Scimudin cheeses. In particular most of the surface isolates from Formaggio di Fossa cheese were identified as L. acidipiscis, a Gram positive rod, microaerophilic, able to grow in 10–12% (w/v) NaCl. This species originally isolated from fermented fish, and characterized by Tanasupawat et al. (2000), was recently reported to be present in Greek cheese (Asteri et al., 2009). Enteroccocci were present in larger numbers on Scimudin (107 CFU/cm2) and Gorgonzola (105 CFU/cm2) surfaces than on Fontina rind (104 CFU/cm2) as reported by Dolci et al. (2009) while Cocolin et al. (2009) obtained diverse enterococci counts, with variation between 103–108 CFU/g within the 18 samples of Gorgonzola rinds analyzed.