Microbial Succession in Spontaneously Fermented Grape Must Before, During and After Stuck Fermentation

The microbial succession in spontaneously fermenting Riesling must was investigated from the beginning(pressing) until the end (sulphuring) of the fermentation in two harvest years (2008 and 2009) at a Mosellewinery (Germany). In both years, the fermentation was interrupted by a stuck period. The length of thestuck period varied considerably (20 weeks in 2008 and one week in 2009). Different yeasts (Candida,Debaryomyces, Pichia, Hanseniaspora, Saccharomyces, Metschnikowia, Cryptococcus, Filobasidium andRhodotorula) and bacteria (Gluconobacter, Asaia, Acetobacter, Oenococcus, Lactobacillus, Bacillus andPaenibacillus) were isolated successively by plating. The main fermenting organism was Saccharomycesuvarum. Specific primers were developed for S. uvarum, H. uvarum and C. boidinii, followed by thedetermination of the total cell counts with qPCR. The initial glucose concentration differed between thetwo years and was 116 g/L in 2008 and 85.4 g/L in 2009. Also, the fructose concentrations were differentin both years (114 g/L in 2008 and 77.8 g/L in 2009). The stuck period appeared when the glucose/fructoseratio was 0.34 and 0.12 respectively. The microbiota changed during the stuck period

Complexity Results for the Spanning Tree Congestion Problem

We study the problem of determining the spanning tree congestion of a graph. We present some sharp contrasts in the complexity of this problem. First, we show that for every fixed k and d the problem to determine whether a given graph has spanning tree congestion at most k can be solved in linear time for graphs of degree at most d. In contrast, if we allow only one vertex of unbounded degree, the problem immediately becomes NP-complete for any fixed k ≥ 10. For very small values of k however, the problem becomes polynomially solvable. We also show that it is NP-hard to approximate the spanning tree congestion within a factor better than 11/10. On planar graphs, we prove the problem is NP-hard in general, but solvable in linear time for fixed k