Abstract:Yeasts and moulds can cause serious spoilage of all kinds of foods and agricultural products, including fruits, vegetables, cereal, dairy products and meat and lead to sizable economic losses. Moulds also produce health-damaging mycotoxins such as aflatoxins, trichothecenes, fumonisins, ochratoxin A and patulins, and possibly bring great hidden danger to food security. Consumer demands for minimally processed foods and reduced use of chemical preservatives have stimulated to research on antifungal bio-protective agents. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) has been widely applied as bio-protective agents in all kinds of foods, because of their effective antagonistic activity against pathogenic bacteria and spoilage microorganisms in food by ecological niche competition in which forms an acidic environment and produces various antimicrobial end-products. This review summarized the screenings and potential applications of antifungal Lactic acid bacteria in the preservation of food, and antifungal metabolites from lactic acid bacteria and their inhibitory mechanisms. Some tendencies were presented and discussed, aiming to supply reference to the further research in this paper.
