Original article Chemical and microbiological quality of Garris, Sudanese fermented camel’s milk product Abdel Moneim El-Hadi Sulieman, 1 * Abdalla Adam Ilayan 2 & Ahmed El-Awad El Faki 3 1 Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, University of Gezira, PO Box 20, Wad-Medani, Sudan 2 Faculty of Engineering, University of Elimam Elmahadi, Kosti, Sudan 3 Department of Food Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan (Received 15 February 2005; Accepted in revised form 4 May 2005) Summary In the present study, some of the chemical and microbiological characteristics of garris,a Sudanese traditionally fermented camel’s milk product, were investigated. The chemical analyses included, pH, titrable acidity and ethanol contents. A total of 100 strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were isolated from twenty samples of traditionally fermented household garris. The selected isolates were phenotypically characterized by their ability to ferment 49 carbohydrates using API 50 CHL kits and additional biochemical tests. LAB dominated the microflora of garris samples, and the major genera were Lactobacillus (74%), followed by Lactococcus (12%), Enterococcus (10%) and Leuconostocs (4%). The most predominant Lactobacillus species were identified as Lactobacillus paracasei ssp. paracasei (64 strains), L. fermentum (seven strains) and only three strains as L. plantarum. Most strains produced the enzymes that are relevant to cultured dairy product processing. The Lactococcus species were identified as Lactococcus lactis. The average pH value of the samples was 4.42 ± 0.21. The pH values were accompanied with increasing of titrable acidity which averaged 1.72 ± 0.04%. The relatively high amounts of ethanol detected in all samples (average 1.40 ± 0.03%) together with the high yeasts counts (6.0 ± 0.53 log 10 cfu mL )1 ), indicated that the fermentation process of garris is a yeast- lactic fermentation. Keywords Garris, fermentation, microbial viable count, lactic acid bacteria. Introduction Lactic fermentation has been known for a long time and the early bacteriologists to describe those bacteria which spontaneously soured traditional lactic acid fermented foods used the expression Ôlactic acid bacteriaÕ. In developed countries, most of the lactic acid fermentation has been concen- trated in dairy and vegetable products while in the developing countries and particularly in Africa, lactic acid fermentation predominates all the indigenous processing of cereals like maize, sor- ghum millet (Mbugua, 1987; Halm et al., 1993; Hounhouigan et al., 1994) and root crops such as cassava (Amoa-Awua et al., 1996; Odunfa & Oyewole, 1998). Lactic acid fermentations have survived because of the traditional beliefs, good taste and appearance of the product as well as a long shelf life. Lactic acid bacteria are also reported to colon- ize the human intestinal mucosa leading to bene- ficial effects (Fuller, 1992). The lactic acid bacteria implicated in African fermented foods comprise of species that belong to the genera Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, Leucononstoc and Pediococcus (Oyewole, 1997). These microorganisms vary in their composition from one product to another. Because of variations in conditions, a great number of fermented milk types have developed. *Correspondent: Fax: 249 511 26921 e-mail moneim_ug@yahoo.com International Journal of Food Science and Technology 2006, 41, 321–328 321 doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.2005.01070.x Ó 2005 Institute of Food Science and Technology Trust Fund