Bacteriophages in Dairy Industry: PCR Methods as Valuable Tools

Microorganisms have been empirically used since ancestral times to produce fermented dairy products from milk. In the actual dairy industry, milk is subjected to large scale fermentation processes that involve microorganisms mostly belonging to the Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) group. Bacteriophages that infect LAB have been claimed as one of the principal sources of fermentation failure (spoilage or delay) on the manufacture of many dairy products (Brüssow et al., 1998; Josephsen & Neve, 1998; Garneau & Moineau, 2011). Some estimates assume that virulent phages are the primary direct responsible of the largest-economic loss of dairy factories, since they affect negatively up to the 10% of all milk fermentations (Moineau & Levesque, 2005).