39 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 X. Dai et al. (eds.), Fungi in Sustainable Food Production, Fungal Biology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64406-2_4 Chapter 4 Fungi in Food Bioprocessing Rekha Kumari, Shashank Mishra, and Ashish Sachan 4.1 Introduction For over a millennium, a majority of human population has taken advantage of natu- ral fermentation processes to swage over a wide range of products including cheese, bread, yoghurt, beer, wine and different other beverages. Earlier the reasons behind these fermentative processes were not established, until relatively recently research- ers tried to fll in the technical gap via exploring the world of microorganisms responsible for these processes. Fermentation is often defned as a process where microbes act upon food consid- ering it as an external source of energy. Fermentation basically converts sugars that are present in food into acids, thereby improving the taste, texture and odour of food products. This process also helps upon improving the food’s storage life along with its quality and thus reduces the growth of unwanted microbes responsible for food spoilage. There are different microbes responsible for carrying out these fermenta- tions. A major portion of fermented food products are produced using fungal spe- cies. Fungal fermented food products are those in which the fungal species (yeasts and moulds) primarily play an important in modifying the desirable qualities of fermented food products. R. Kumari Department of Bio-Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India S. Mishra (*) Quality Control and Quality Assurance Laboratory, Biotech Park, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India A. Sachan (*) Department of Life Sciences, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India e-mail: ashish.sachan@cuj.ac.in