Penicillin and tetracycline as contamination control agents in alcoholic fermentation of sugar cane molasses.

Several papers have been published to show the use of antibiotics as inhibitors of foreign microorganiisms in industrial fermentations (Strandskov and Bockelmann, 1953; Day et al., 1954; Borzani and Aquarone, 1957; Aquarone, 1958; Falcone, 1958; Torloni et al., 1958; Falcone, 1959; Aquarone, 1959) to assure high yields and/or good quality products. The favorable influence of penicillin as a contamination control agent in molasses and sugar cane alcoholic fermentations (Borzani and Aquarone, 1957) and the good results obtained with other antibiotics (Aquarone, 1958; Torloni et al., 1958; Aquarone, 1959) justify the present report. This paper presents results of experiments carried out to study the action of lower levels of penicillin than previously tried (Borzani and Aquarone, 1957) and of tetracycline as contamination control agents in alcoholic fermentation of blackstrap molasses. The influence of riboflavin on the action of tetracycline (Dony-Crotteux, 1957) also was studied.