Genetic characterization of fermentation yeasts as an element of geographical indication of ‘cachaça’ and ‘aguardente’ from Luiz Alves, SC

Abstract

The municipality of Luiz Alves/SC maintains familiar traditions of ‘cachaça’ and ‘aguardente’ production by artisanal alembics, demanding Geographic Identification processes for the valorization of local products and protection of associated traditional knowledge. Aiming to subsidize the Geographical Identification of the products, the objective of this work was to characterize, by molecular basis, the native yeasts used by six alembics in the region. Analysis of three genomic regions (ITS, LSU and interdelta) were performed for comparison with the commercial yeast UFLA CA-11. Despite the similarity (BLAST) of the LSU/ITS sequences of all yeasts with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, both phylogenetic inferences and principal component analyzes recovered important genetic differentiation in relation to commercial yeast, along with the uniqueness between samples from different establishments. The results present herein are pioneering in molecular characterization of yeasts used in production processes of cachaça in SC aiming Geographic Identification of Luiz Alves products and highlights the potential use of those molecular markers in the process.