MATERIALS AND METHODS MAHUA JUICE The mahua flowers obtained were cleaned and dried in hot air oven at 60C temperature for 5 h. 1 kg of mahua flowers was soaked in 1L distilled water containing 1.5 g potassium meta bisulphite (KMS) for 12 h to prevent the growth of other contaminants. For preparation of juice from the flowers, additional wa ter was added to facilitated the easy grinding. The mixture was ground with the help of electric mixture grinder and filtered through muslin cloth, stored in sc rew capped bottles and kept in a refrigerator at 4C. The obtained juice had total soluble solids (TSS) 20 Brix , pH- 5.3 and volume about 3.5L from 1 kg of dried mahua flowers. INOCULUM OF YEAST CULTURE The yeast strain obtained from the Department of Dairy and Food Microbiology, Co llege of Dairy and Food Science Technology, Udaipur (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) w as cultured on MGYP broth (Himedia, India) at 25C for 48 h in a biological oxygen demand (BOD) incubator. The MGYP broth contained malt extract (0.75g), peptone ( 1.25 g), yeast extract (0.75g) and dextrose (5 g) in 250 ml distilled water. The yeast inoculum was had 4.8 x 104 cfu/ml. FERMENTATION CONDITIONS: For optimization of fermentation conditions, the following treatment combination s were used: Temperature of 25 and 30C; pH of 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0; period of fermentation of 7, 14 and 21 days. The pH of juice extract was adjusted at pH 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 with help of citric acid. The yeast extract was added as a nitrogenous source at the rate of 0.1% (w /v) in the mahua juice. Each Erlenmeyer flask containing 100 ml of juice was ino culated with 1 ml (1% v/v) of 48 h old yeast culture under aseptic conditions. T hen transferred in a BOD incubator for fermentation and maintained at 25 or 30C fo r different periods of incubation. The samples were analysed after 7, 14 and 21 days of alcoholic fermentation. All experiments were conducted in triplicates an d a control (un-inoculated) was also taken for each treatment.