Welcome!
Welcome to the EATLAC project at UC Davis! Our goal is to provide you with educational resources and accurate scientific information on lacto-fermented fruits and vegetables.
You can read about our project in this article from UC Davis Magazine, Dec. 2019.
Community science fermented fruit and vegetable microbiota
In 2020, we started a community science project designed to take a peek at those amazing microbes in homemade fermented fruits and vegetables. In response to the request for help, our team was thrilled to receive 80 different fermented fruit and vegetable samples. These fermented foods contained diverse ingredients, ranging from cabbage, lemons, and chili peppers, and many more. Using modern “microbiome” genetic methods, diverse bacterial communities were detected in the foods.. It was fascinating to learn that each fermented food was unique, containing different proportions of microbes. This exciting result shows the importance of different recipes and possibly even different kitchens and fermented food preparation practices on the final result.
Click here for detailed overview of the different ferment samples and description of the bacterial groups found.
Funding
Funding for this project was provided by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).