BIOTECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN RICOTTA FORTE PRODUCTION

Ricotta forte is a traditional fermented whey cheese cream mainly manufactured in Apulia and locally in Southern Italy; it is included among the traditional agrifood products of Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies aiming to be preserved for its cultural and gastronomic heritage. This product, obtained starting from acid-thermal denatured cheese whey added with small amounts of various milks (ricotta), undergoes a long fermentation and aging processes (over 6 months) that confers a distinctive organoleptic bouquet (pungent and cheesy flavour) and high palatability score (Faccia et al., 2018). The few microbiological studies focus on sample-specific heterofermentative lactobacilli and yeast populations, supposed to promote acidification, proteolysis and lipolysis (Baruzzi et al., 2000; Caputo et al., 2018). Since Ricotta forte is receiving increasing interest by the gourmet food markets, a standardized and sustainable manufacturing process is to develop to obtain Ricotta forte with high level of safety and quality without preservatives. In this context, OR7 workpackage of Innotipico project cod. 3QKDQX3 (Apulia Regional INNONETWORK programme 2018-2019 ) aims to develop a process of production of Ricotta forte compromising three main steps (acidification, maturation and refinement) mediated by selected microbial strains (lactic acid bacteria, yeasts and fungi, respectively) from artisanal whey cheese and ITEM Microbial Culture Collection of ISPA. The ongoing activities have already allowed to find 10 lactic acid bacteria and yeast strains able to quickly acidify the fresh ricotta and improve its spreadability and its flavour. These skills will be validated in semi-industrial productions during the experimental development activities.