Abstract: Palm wine produced traditionally and consumed by many people around the world and specifically in Burkina Faso posed health risks because of questionable quality of wine produced by mix culture fermentation and the use of antiseptics for the stabilization. In order to improve its quality, Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains isolated from Borassus akeassii wines and identified by amplification and RFLP analysis of the 5-8S-ITS region were used for in vitro fermentation of unfermented palm sap. The physicochemical characteristics of the sap were measured before and after fermentation process by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and the microbiological quality were also performed. HPLC analysis showed that glucose and fructose concentration in palm sap were 37.0 and 27.6 g/L respectively, ethanol content was ranged between 2.76 and 5.31 % (g/mL) for controlled fermentation and 2.20 % (g/mL) for spontaneous fermentation. Lactic and acetic acids were ranged between 0.1 and 0.3 g/L and 1.5 and 1.6 g/L for controlled fermentation versus 2.5 and 3.1 g/L and the spontaneous fermentation respectively. Coliforms and Staphylococcus aureus were detected only in the unfermented palm sap and the wine fermented spontaneously.
Principal component analysis showed a good separation between spontaneous and controlled fermentation. Sterilization and controlled fermentation of the unfermented sap with palm wine Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains led to the improvement of palm wine quality.