Abstract: Traditional fermented foods with their own production methods have existed for centuries in China. These foods have special flavour and functions due to a great variety of microorganisms during their production processes. Recently, the modernization and industrialization of these fermented foods their production methods and food safety have gained extensive attention. Biodiversity and functions of microorganisms during fermentation process have become the hot topics of traditional fermented foods. Molecular biotechnologies, such as metagenomics, DNA microarray and real-time PCR, were widely used for studying microorganisms of traditional fermented foods. In this article, current progresses are summarized, which provides insights into current trends for these technologies in the application of traditional fermented foods.

Key words: traditional fermented foods, metagenomics, DNA micro-array, real-time PCR, microbial diversity