Microbiological quality of tempeh with different wraps: banana leaf versus plastic.

Tempeh is a traditional Indonesian fermented food widely consumed and became staple food in some Indonesian diet. Commercially, tempeh is available in banana leaf or plastic wraps. The wraps are not only important for fermentation and giving final form of tempeh,  but also potential source of food microbiome.

Dominant in tempeh were primarily originated from soybean.

During tempeh production, boiling was considered as heat treatment that could significantly reduce or eliminate bacterial population in soybean before fungal inoculation. The objective of this study was to enumerate and trace communities in pre-boiling soybean, post-boiling soybean, and fresh tempeh designated as RTI and EMP. Standard plate count and qRT-PCR were employed to determine the culturable and non-culturable bacteria, while Enterobacterial Repetitive Intragenic Consensus PCR was conducted to determine the intraspecies genomic variations.