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Fermented foods were likely to have been the first among all types of processed foods consumed by human beings. The role that fermented food plays is not only related to the development of civilizations and cultural relationships between countries but also related to the nutritional importance of its population. Of course, the early manufacturers of fermented foods didn't take into account the advantages of modern sciences, because enzymes and microorganisms were discovered just 150-200 years ago. For that reason, we can conclude why the ancient fermentation techniques were known to philosophers and alchemists, but not to biologists. It demonstrated that the fermentation mechanisms involved many secrets still undiscovered. Recently, applications of molecular techniques for analyzing and study the fermented foods have been explored. In this review, we provide answers with a critical vision to many questions for understanding the role of molecular techniques to discover the secrets of fermented foods such as how to evaluate the traditional fermented foods? Why using molecular techniques to study the fermented foods not else? Is the future will carry to us a boom in molecular technologies contribute to the detection of more secrets of the fermented food?

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is among the major food crops in the world and is cultivated in all tropical and subtropical regions particularly in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Asia and Africa regions account for 95% of the world's production. Among the root and tuber crops grown in the world, sweet potato ranks second after cassava. In previous decades, sweet potato represented food and feed security, now it offers income generation possibilities, through bioprocessing products. Bioprocessing of sweet potato offers novel opportunities to commercialize this crop by developing a number of functional foods and beverages such as sour starch, lacto-pickle, lacto-juice, soy sauce, acidophilus milk, sweet potato curd and yogurt, and alcoholic drinks through either solid state or submerged fermentation. Sweet potato tops, especially leaves are preserved as hay or silage. Sweet potato flour and bagassae are used as substrates for production of microbial protein, enzymes, organic acids, monosodium glutamate, chitosan, etc. Additionally, sweet potato is a promising candidate for production of bioethanol. This review deals with the development of various products from sweet potato by application of bioprocessing technology. To the best of our knowledge, there is no review paper on the potential impacts of the sweet potato bioprocessing.