**6. Traditional and novel fermented legume products**

#### **6.1 Traditional foods**

Legumes are used as food ingredients worldwide, but only in few geographical areas they are commonly used for the production of fermented foods (**Table 1**), such as Japanese natto, Nigerian dawadawa or iru, Nepalese kinema, and Thai thua nao. Fermented legumes are consumed directly or used as ingredients or flavoring agents [124]. Yukiwari-natto and hama-natto spontaneous microbiota are dominated by molds, while *Bacillus* spp. is commonly isolated in itohiki-natto. Molds are also responsible for meitauza, oncom, and sufu fermentation, while yeasts dominate the fermentation of the Indian papad/papadam. Tempe is characterized by a microbial consortium including molds and LAB. Also Indian idli, wadi, and dhokla are produced by the combined fermentation activities of LAB and yeasts. Complex microbiota including LAB, yeasts, and molds characterize the fermentation processes for obtaining inyu, kecap asin, kecap manis, meju, miso, soy sauce, and tauco [118, 125].

Fermentation has an important impact on the nutritional and sensory profile of legumes [2, 96]. However, production of traditional fermentation products is often managed empirically, with rudimentary equipment, and based on the activity of endogenous microorganisms [96]. The quality of raw materials as well as the biotechnologies is not standardized [96]. These products are characterized by the local cultural identity. Despite their important sensorial role in Asian food, bringing, for instance, the umami taste to the meals [126], the necessity to improve overall quality and to minimize food safety hazards has been recently highlighted [127].

LAB have an important role in some of the traditional fermented legume products (such as in vietnamese tuong and cambodian sieng), but many other microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts, and molds) are involved in spontaneous fermentation processes. Nevertheless, the advantages of legumes fermentation with LAB are gaining interest from the scientific and food industry community [2].


*Fermentation as Strategy for Improving Nutritional, Functional, Technological, and Sensory… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102523*



**Table 1.**

*Main traditional food products containing fermented legumes.*
