Figure 1.

Sources for obtaining wild Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains and their use in the fermentation process. Wild strains may be obtained from various environments such as insects, wasps and flies, flowers, trees, and their surroundings. These strains must be phenotypically characterized under fermentative conditions of interest. In this way, strains can then be selected for genetic improvement programs with commercial strains (A, intra-specific hybridization), subjected to an adaptive evolution process (B) or used in the generation of interspecific hybrids (C). Furthermore, wild alleles may be incorporated into commercial strains by an assisted introgression strategy (D). Finally, strains obtained by hybridization can also be subjected to an adaptive evolution process (Created with BioRender.com).