The Effects of Temperature on Co2 Production in Yeast

Abstract

Yeast is commonly used in the bread baking industry as a leavening agent, which causes bread to rise (French 2015). We tested the CO₂ production of Saccharomyces cerevisiae at different temperatures. We conducted two trials at room temperature and elevated temperature. We found that the CO₂ production at the warmer temperature is significantly higher compared to water at room temperature. Our hypothesis is that the warmer temperature will produce more CO₂ than the room temperature water because at warmer temperatures the oxidation process, during glycolysis in the cytoplasm, speeds up as temperatures rise (Hoefnagels 2015) is supported by our experiment. We suggest more rigorous studies with more trials to see the effects of temperature on CO₂ production.