Penicillium roqueforti
| Penicillium roqueforti | |
|---|---|
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| Blue Stilton cheese, showing the blue-green mold veins produced by Penicillium roqueforti | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Eurotiomycetes |
| Order: | Eurotiales |
| Family: | Trichocomaceae |
| Genus: | Penicillium |
| Species: | P. roqueforti |
| Binomial name | |
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Penicillium roqueforti Thom (1906) |
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| Synonyms | |
Penicillium roqueforti is a common saprotrophic fungus from the family Trichocomaceae. Widespread in nature, it can be isolated from soil, decaying organic matter, and plants.
The major industrial use of this fungus is the production of blue cheeses, flavouring agents, antifungals, polysaccharides, proteases and other enzymes. The fungus has been a constituent of Roquefort, Stilton, Danish blue, Cabrales, Gorgonzola and other blue cheeses that humans are known to have eaten since approximately AD 50; blue cheese is mentioned in literature as far back as AD 79, when Pliny the Elder remarked upon its rich flavour.
First described by American mycologist Charles Thom in 1906,P. roqueforti was initially a heterogeneous species of blue-green sporulating fungi. They were grouped into different species based on phenotypic differences, but later combined into one species by Kenneth B. Raper and Thom (1949). The P. roqueforti group got a reclassification in 1996 thanks to molecular analysis of ribosomal DNA sequences. Formerly divided into two varieties ― cheese-making (P. roqueforti var. roqueforti) and patulin-making (P. roqueforti var. carneum) ― P. roqueforti was reclassified into three species: P. roqueforti, P. carneum, and P. paneum. The complete genome sequence of P. roqueforti was published in 2014.
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