From The Lab: Is Camembert in trouble?

The French Camembert cheese is on the “verge of extinction,” according to the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).The reason behind its decline is a  fungus called Penicillium Camemberti.

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Camembert is made using the fungus called Penicillium Camemberti. © Dhananjay Khadilkar

Penicillium Camemberti is responsible for the texture and flavour of Camembert. Experts are now worried that the fungus is facing a decline in its reproductive capacity.

According to Tatiana Giraud of the Ecology, Systematics and Evolution laboratory there is ongoing concern about the genetic diversity in the mould that is used to make Camembert as well as Roquefort.

"That's because the selection has been too strong in many places. We took the same strain and have lost all the diversity that had been generated during domestication," she said.

"The most problematic aspect when you have a single strain which is not reproducing sexually anymore is that you cannot regenerate diversity and purge bad mutations."

She added that mutations that cause nonfunctional genes accumulate in genomes resulting eventually in a decrease in spore production and the ability to make good cheese.

How cheese fungi adapt

Jeanne Ropars, who is also a researcher at the Ecology, Systematics and Evolution laboratory, said their research aims to understand how cheese fungi adapt to the cheese environment.

"We are using genomics, but also lab experiments. To evaluate our hypothesis, we sequenced the genomes of several strains and species from the cheese environment," she said.

"We need to compare strains coming from the cheese and strains coming from other environments to be able to answer the question of adaptation.