Immobilization of cells in probiotic drinks

Abstract

Nowadays, the probiotic global market has a great rise. People tend to consume probiotic supplements and foods to support their health and especially their gut, but more and more researches are disclosed for the benefits of probiotics in human health, and revealed new techniques for the processing of probiotics. The immobilization of probiotic cells is a method of encapsulation in order to incorporate probiotics in different and various foods that do not contain by nature probiotics, and also to protect the encapsulated substance from losing its viability. This technique is extremely helpful for food industries that make foods fortified with probiotics in order to minimize their production steps. A good example is the pasteurization of a liquid that can be done just one time with the probiotics inside. The encapsulated probiotic will survive due to the encapsulating matrix that protects it. Thus, the industry can save time and money by applying this technique. In this paper studied the viability of free cells of Lactobacillus acidophilous LA-05 and immobilized cells encapsulated in sodium alginate beads by using the technique of ionic gelation. The cells, both free and encapsulated tested in some stressful conditions like low pH of 3, 5 and 6.7, pasteurization time from 0 to 30 minutes and temperature at 63oC and finally pass through a test for an in vitro human digestion. The results reveal that the probiotic cells can survive during the human digestion simulation, but the encapsulated cells do not manage to survive during the thermal stress that simulates pasteurization.