Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXI
Written by Bogdan MATEI, Florentina MATEI, Camelia DIGUȚĂ, Ovidiu POPA

Postharvest diseases of fruits and grapes are caused by fungi and bacteria and the losses in this step increase several folds than in the field. In the case of the grapes, most damages are due to the presence of filamentous fungi belonging to species like Botrytis sp., Penicillium sp. or Aspergillus sp. Several non-chemical treatments have been proposed for fungal decay control, including acetic acid. Our experiments have targeted the potential inhibitory effect of different tea sourced Kombucha crude extracts on the most common moulds of the grapes in pre and postharvest steps. Kombucha is known mainly as a consortium (SCOBY - symbiotic acetic/lactic bacteria and yeast). Because of the presence of acetic bacteria the final content in acetic acid of Kombucha suspensions vary between 8.5 and 17 g/l. Kombucha tea suspension has been prepared starting from three different source of tea plants, respectively green tea, green tea with Melissa officinalis L. and oolong tea. The most significant inhibition has been registered in the case of Botrytis cinerea (38 -55%), less significant on Penicillium expansum (4-8%) and not significant on Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus carbonarius. It is proposed further to investigate the inhibition of Kombucha extracts, in vivo, on artificially infected grape berries with Botrytis cinerea and to validate the in vitro results.

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