Improved performance of gravitational field-flow fractionation for screening wine-making yeast varieties

Performance of gravitational field-flow fractionation (GFFF) is improved here with respect to the ability to fractionate and distinguish different varieties of wine-making yeast from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A new GFFF channel with non-polar walls has been employed to enhance fractionation selectivity and reproducibility. Since GFFF retention depends from first principles on particle size, Coulter counter measurements were performed in order to compare size distribution profiles with GFFF profiles. From such a comparison, GFFF was shown to be able to reveal differences in yeast cells other than size. This could make use of GFFF for screening different varieties of wine-making yeast towards future quality assessment procedures based on a possible correlation between yeast cell morphology indexes and quality indexes.