Résumé
Fermented fruits and vegetables contribute significantly to the diets of rural populations in a number of developing countries. They play an important role in providing food security enhancing livelihood and improving the nutrition, destroying the undesirable factors in the raw products, reducing the volume of materials and above all, supporting the social well being of millions of people around the world, particularly the marginalized and vulnerable in society by providing a safer product (Battcock and Azam-Ali, 2001; Arid and Daglioglu, 2002). Fruits are rich in sugar, vitamins, minerals and water, and are slightly acidic; they are, therefore, suitable for alcoholic fermentation for wine and other beverages. On the other hand, vegetables have low sugar content but are rich in minerals and vitamins, and have neutral pH, and thus provide a natural medium suitable for microbial fermentation, particularly lactic acid bacteria (Flemming, 1982; Cheigh and Park, 1994). Further, vegetables are perishable agricultural products and can naturally be degraded by various microorganisms whose inhibition may occur under some conditions of acidity, presence or absence of alcohol, antibiotics, bacteriocins, high salt concentration and lack of assimilable carbon-based substrates (Montet et al., 1999). Those conditions are generally created through the multiplication of certain commensal microorganisms growing on vegetables.