Microbial Innovation in Fermented Foods: From Traditional Practices to Modern Advances

Fermented foods have been part of human diets for thousands of years, transforming simple ingredients into safe, flavourful, and nutritious products through the action of microbes. Every culture has its own traditional examples—bread, cheese, kimchi, kombucha—each carrying cultural and social importance as well as potential health benefits. While people have long relied on tradition and experience to guide fermentation, advances in microbiology are now giving us a clearer picture of what happens during these processes.

New scientific tools make it possible to study how microbial communities grow and change, how they influence flavour and safety, and how they can be directed to improve consistency. This knowledge creates opportunities to protect traditional practices while also adapting them to meet modern needs for safer, healthier, and more reliable foods.

The aim of this Research Topic is to connect traditional fermentation knowledge with modern science so that these foods remain safe, nutritious, and culturally meaningful. Many artisanal methods produce distinctive flavours and textures but can face challenges such as batch-to-batch variation or risks from unwanted microbes. Conversely, highly controlled industrial methods may lose some of the diversity and character that make these foods unique. By bringing these approaches together, we hope to show how they can support one another.

We invite studies exploring how microbial communities develop during fermentation and storage, and how these changes affect quality, flavour, and safety. Research on starter cultures—whether from traditional back-slopping or newly designed blends—is welcome, particularly where they help ensure reliable results while retaining the qualities of traditional foods.

We are also interested in work addressing safety in artisanal or unpasteurized products, including natural antimicrobials, competitive microbial interactions, and improved fermentation practices to control harmful bacteria. Studies showing how fermentation can improve nutritional value—by increasing vitamins, reducing anti-nutrients, or enhancing digestibility—are especially valuable for communities where access to nutritious food is limited.

In addition, we encourage contributions on lesser-known fermented foods and the use of modern analytical tools such as genomics, metabolomics, and synthetic biology to better understand and improve fermentation processes.

By uniting the insights of tradition with the precision of modern microbiology, this collection will highlight how fermentation can continue to produce foods that are safe, consistent, and deeply connected to cultural heritage, ensuring their place in diets for generations to come.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Fermented Foods, Microbial succession, Starter cultures, Food safety, Pathogen control, Industrial microbiology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.