UDC 663.532.1:579.864.1 original scientific paper ISSN 1330-9862 (FTB-1308) Microflora and Selected Metabolites of Potato Pulp Fermented with an Indonesian Starter Ragi Tapé Ayumi Abe 1 , I-Nengah Sujaya 2 , Teruo Sone 1 , Kozo Asano 1 and Yuji Oda 3 * 1 Department of Bioscience and Chemistry, Graduate School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-8589, Hokkaido, Japan 2 The Study Program of Public Health Science, Udayana University, Bukit Jimbaran Campus, Badung, Bali, Indonesia 3 Department of Upland Agriculture, National Agricultural Research Center for Hokkaido Region, Memuro, Kasai, 082-0071, Hokkaido, Japan Received: February 19, 2004 Accepted: July 6, 2004 Summary When potato pulp was mixed with Indonesian starter ragi tapé and incubated, both lactic acid and ethanol were gradually formed and attained certain concentrations during 2 days of fermentation. Viable counts of fungi in fresh weight matter, yeasts and lactic acid bacteria after fermentation were 10 5 , 10 7 and 10 5 CFU/g, respectively. Denaturing gra- dient gel electrophoresis of the PCR-amplified internal transcribed spacer of 18S–28S rRNA genes detected Amylomyces rouxii-Rhizopus oryzae, Mucor indicus, Candida tropicalis and Saccharomycopsis fibuligera and revealed that Amylomyces rouxii-Rhizopus oryzae domi- nated throughout the fermentation period. Amylomyces rouxii cannot be discriminated from the lactic acid-accumulating group of Rhizopus oryzae because the amplified sequences of these fungi were shown to be identical. Morphological characteristics were then studied for Rhizopus-like fungi isolated from fermented potato pulp. Those strains that had pro- duced an enormous number of chlamydospores in the aerial and substrate mycelium were identified as Amylomyces rouxii. The microflora of fermented potato pulp was similar to that made from glutinous rice, namely tapé ketan. Key words: Amylomyces rouxii, lactic acid fermentation, ragi tapé 169 A. ABE et al.: Potato Pulp Fermented with Starter Ragi Tapé, Food Technol. Biotechnol. 42 (3) 169–173 (2004) * Corresponding author; Phone: ++81 155 62 92 80; Fax: ++81 155 62 92 81; E-mail: yujioda@affrc.go.jp Introduction In Asian countries, dried powders, flat cakes or hard balls are often used as inocula for the production of fer- mented foods and alcoholic beverages from starchy ma- terials (1). These starters contain fungi, yeasts and lactic acid bacteria and are referred to by different names in each area (2,3): ragi tapé in Indonesia, look-pang in Thai- land, chin-hueh in China, bubod in the Philippines, nuruk in Korea and murcha in Himalayan regions. Lee and Fu- jio (4) have isolated some microorganisms from banh men, a starter from Vietnam, and identified the fungal strains as Amylomyces rouxii, Mucor circinelloides, Mucor indicus and Rhizopus oryzae, and the yeast strains as Can- dida pelliculosa, Pichia burtonii, Pichia anomala, Saccharo- myces cerevisiae and Saccharomycopsis fibuligera, based on the morphological and biochemical characteristics. Simi- lar microbial composition has been reported for other fermentation starters (1,3). Conventional Indonesian tapé is fermented glutinous rice produced by using ragi tapé and consumed as a