Rescuing France's Vanishing Cheeses

During the 1950s, the cheese industry transitioned to utilizing a specific albino strain of P. camemberti notable for its pure white appearance and silky texture, which has since become characteristic of Camembert cheese.² According to French scientists, over subsequent generations, this albino strain of P. camemberti, already incapable of sexual reproduction, is now gradually losing its capacity to produce asexual spores due to mutations in its genome.¹ Consequently, the widespread adoption of this albino strain by cheese makers has made it increasingly challenging for the industry to produce a sufficient quantity of P. camemberti spores for the production of these renowned cheeses. In the world of cheese, this problem is not unique to Camembert and Brie. The diversity of P. roqueforti, a fungi used to make blue cheeses, has also shrunk dramatically since the industrial cheese production began.³

ATCC is instrumental in safeguarding microbial cultures. Serving as a global nonprofit biological resource center, ATCC meticulously gathers, verifies, preserves, and disseminates a broad spectrum of microbial strains encompassing bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists. Among its vast collection are several isolates of P. camemberti that were isolated from various cheeses between 1904 and 1984 (Table 1). By storing these strains under optimal conditions, ATCC effectively preserves their genomes, essentially freezing them in time with minimal risk of mutation. This preservation ensures their viability for future use, enabling the revival of these strains to sustain cheese production. Furthermore, these preserved strains serve as invaluable resources for scientific research, facilitating the breeding and development of novel commercial strains with a diverse gene pool.

In essence, ATCC's efforts can not only uphold the heritage and continuity of cheese-making traditions but also foster innovation and advancement in microbial science and industry.

Table 1: Cheese-associated Penicillium camemberti and Penicillium roqueforti strains available at ATCC 

Did you know?

ATCC provides a variety of fungal strains that support food production research, including strains for mycoprotein production, fermented food and beverage production, and oil and fat production.

References

1. French cheese under threat | CNRS News. Accessed April 2024 from https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/french-cheese-under-threat 
2. Ropars J, et al. Domestication of the emblematic white cheese-making fungus Penicillium camemberti and its diversification into two varieties. Curr Biol 30: 4441-4453, 2020.
3. Dumas E, et al. Independent domestication events in the blue-cheese fungus Penicillium roqueforti. Mol Ecol 29: 2639–2660, 2020.