The aim of this work was to search for new candidate strains to be included in a culture for Crescenza, a rindless soft cheese, today produced mainly at industrial level using selected starter cultures composed of S. thermophilus. Performance testing was applied to 29 pre-selected strains and a scoring approach was developed to identify the most suitable candidates to be employed in Crescenza cheesemaking. Eight S. thermophilus strains fulfilling most of the desired properties (e.g., high phage resistance, fast acidification rate, no growth below 20 °C, NaCl sensibility, no post acidification at 4 °C) were selected. These strains were grouped in pairs to design different starter culture formulations, which were preliminary tested for the production of Crescenza cheeses at laboratory scale. Two couples of binary cultures (designed Phage rotation 1 and Phage rotation 2) were finally designed and used as starters in pilot scale cheesemaking. The combinations, especially those designed in Phage rotation 1, appeared to be suitable for Crescenza production and showed mutual similarity in terms of strain characteristics, technological performance, and cheese quality. The selection method and ranking approach presented in this work may be adapted to other species of LAB showing traits of industrial interest.

这项工作的目的是为Crescenza（一种无皮软奶酪）的培养物寻找新的候选菌株，Crescenza是一种无皮软奶酪，如今主要使用选定的嗜热链球菌发酵剂培养物以工业水平生产。对29个预选菌株进行了性能测试，并开发了一种计分方法，以鉴定最适合用于Crescenza奶酪生产的候选人。八嗜热链球菌选择满足大多数所需特性（例如，高噬菌体抗性，快速酸化速率，在20°C以下无生长，NaCl敏感性，在4°C下无后酸化）的菌株。将这些菌株成对分组以设计不同的发酵剂配方，并对其进行实验室规模的Crescenza奶酪生产的初步测试。最终，设计了两对二元文化（设计为噬菌体轮换1和噬菌体轮换2），并用作中试规模的奶酪制作的起始剂。这些组合，尤其是在噬菌体轮换1中设计的组合，似乎适合克雷斯琴察（Crescenza）生产，并且在菌株特性，技术性能和奶酪品质方面表现出彼此相似性。