  We address the issue of fermionic particle creation in cosmological bouncing
models governed by General Relativity, but where the bounce itself takes place
due to quantum effects. If the energy scale of the bounce is not very close to
the Planck energy, the Wheeler-DeWitt approach can be used to furnish sensible
singularity-free background models with a contracting phase preceding an
expanding phase in which the fermions evolve. The fermionic fields considered
are massive, neutral and minimally coupled to gravity. We are particularly
interested in neutrinos, neutrons and heavy neutrinos motivated by theories
beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. We perform a numerical analysis
for a bouncing model containing radiation and a pressureless fluid. The results
reveal that the fermionic production is very small, with no back-reaction,
unless the fermions are very heavy with masses up to $10^9$GeV. Hence,
investigations concerning baryogenesis in such bouncing models should either go
beyond the minimal coupling between gravity and the fermionic fields considered
here, or assume the existence of such heavy fermions as a starting point.
