The monitoring of fermentation processes is an important topic in the food industry. In this work, the method of electrochemical fingerprint was proposed to detect the fermentation process of sour bamboo shoots. At the same time, the contents of total acid, amino acid nitrogen, total sugar and flavonoid of bamboo shoots at different fermentation stages were also measured. The changes of electrochemical fingerprints reflected the changes of flavonoids in the fermentation process of bamboo shoots to some extent. The electrochemical fingerprint data were processed with first and second derivatives. These data were modeled by BP neural network and RBF neural network respectively to train the data of different fermentation stages. The results show that BP neural network is more suitable for identifying different fermentation stages of bamboo shoots.
Suansun (fermented bamboo shoots) was prepared by natural fermentation (NF) and inoculation fermentation (IF) with a starter culture containing Lactococcus lactis , Leuconostoc citreum , and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum in this study, to evaluate the effects of inoculation mixed starter culture on physicochemical, flavor and sensory characteristics of suansun. The results showed that IF suansun acidified faster and to a greater extent than NF. Besides, the accelerated acidification process significantly decreased the nitrite content, shortened the fermentation time and improved the food safety of the final suansun product in IF. At the end of fermentation, the lactic acid concentration was significantly higher in IF (6.17 ± 0.25 g/L) than in NF (3.83 ± 0.28 g/L). Twenty-seven volatile compounds were identified as the characteristic flavor compounds in suansun and the relative content of nonanal, hexanal, 1-octen-3-ol and 3-octanone (ROAV >1) was higher in IF than in NF at the late stage of fermentation. In addition, 132 non-volatile compounds were identified as significant differential metabolites, which were mainly small peptides and fatty acids in both NF and IF. Sensory evaluation found that the aroma, taste, texture and overall quality scores of IF suansun were all superior to those of NF suansun. The above results demonstrated that the use of mixed starter cultures of Lac. lactis , Leu. citreum , and L. plantarum contributed to improving the quality of suansun product, and might provide a feasible approach for standardized production of suansun in the future.