The main criterion for food selection is colour. Colours of the commercial products play a vital role to attract the consumers and also represent the quality of the products. Some synthetic colours are detrimental to human health and hence food industry is looking for natural pigment. Rhodotorula is a carotenoid biosynthetic yeast producing yellow or orange red colonies. The carotenoid pigment extracted from Rhodotorula minuta grown in coconut water as natural medium incubated at 300C for 3-5 days period showed stability at acidic, neutral and alkaline PH. Heating the pigment to lab pasteurization (630C/30min), boiling (1000C/10min) and sterilization (1210C/15min) reduced the intensity of extra and intracellular pigment by 15 to 20 per cent. Out of both intracellular behaved better than extracellular pigment of Rhodotorula minuta.

Global scientific pursuits are percolating towards a common goal of finding a solution for efficient utilization of existing resources, developing low cost effective technologies for making the foods more nutritional and preventing losses due to biological, microbiological, chemical, biochemical, mechanical, physical and physiological factors. One of the possible approaches in finding solutions to these problems is exploiting the full potential of fermentation technology. Fermentation is one of the oldest methods of food preservation known to mankind (Prajapati and Nair, 2003). In India, the Rigveda (1500BC) and Sukla Yajurveda have texts mentioning the preparation of Soma (Plant juice) and Sura(Wine/beer) while curd finds its mention in Yajurved and Charaka Samhita. Traditional sour milk products were primarily produced to prolong the shelf-life of milk and for pleasant sensory properties. Fermented milk products got a whole new reputation when Elie Metchnikoff in 1907 hypothesized that replacing or diminishing the number of ‘putrefactive’ bacteria in the gut with lactic acid bacteria could normalize bowel health and prolong life. After more than half a century the term probiotics was coined to reflect Metchnikoff’s idea, much progress has been made since in terms of the fermentation of dairy products.Probiotics are proven effective in gastrointestinal diseases along with successful reports in treating allergy, cancer, diabetes to depression.Sales in Western Europe grew to 8 billion U.S. dollars by 2014. The most developed markets for probiotic foods were Europe and Japan, accounting for more than half of total sales.The Indian probiotic scenario is expected to to grow at a CAGR of 25% during 2014-2019 as reported by the Dairy Industry in India. At this point it is imperative to develop and promote indigenous probiotic strains and make serious efforts to explore the novel functional physiological properties of the enormous Indian microbial diversity.

Vinegar contains about 5% acetic acid in water, varying amounts of fixed fruit acids, colouring matter, salts and a few other fermentation products which impart characteristic flavour and aroma to the product. Vinegar traditionally has been used as a food preservative. Vinegar production methods could range from traditional methods employing wooden casks (Orleans Process) and surface culture (Generator Process) to submerged fermentation. Vinegar is the product made from the conversion of ethyl alcohol to acetic acid by a genus of bacteria Acetobacter. Many technical devices have been developed to improve the industrial production of vinegar. Generally, these improvements increase the speed of the transformation of ethanol into acetic acid in the presence of acetic acid bacteria. In this review a detailed description on vinegar production, methods of production, different substrates and microorganisms used for its production, and the chemistry of vinegar is presented.

Bile tolerance, bile deconjugation and cholesterol reducing properties of five strains of lactobacilli, viz. PD2, PC27, PSC6, PH5 and PFC21 were tested with a view to select culture for conducting in vivo feeding trial for hyperlipemic mice. Strain PD2 was found to be most bile tolerant, followed by PH5, PC27, PSC6 and PFC21. The strain PD2 released maximum amount of free cholic acid (2.37 mM) from sodium taurocholate. With respect to cholesterol assimilation, PH5 showed a maximum reduction of 76.85 %. Overall two strains among five gave a good performance in all these in vitro tests and hence, is recommended for in vivo feeding experiments.