Prebiotics as protectants of lactic acid bacteria

M. SANTOS, E. GERBINO, E. TYMCZYSZYN, A. GÓMEZ ZAVAGLIA.

Ostrava

Congreso; CRYO 2015 - the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Cryobiology; 2015

Society for Cryobiology

The important role of lactic acid bacteria as starters in the elaboration of dairy and pharmaceutical products highlights the requirement of appropriate preservation processes. During these processes, the decrease of water activity is the main cause of damage on bacterial structures. Therefore, protective compounds are necessary to avoid it, and polyhydroxylated compounds (i.e.: sugars) have been consistently used in this function. Prebiotics are widely known because of their beneficial health effects although their use as protectants has been scarcely explored.Vibrational spectroscopy-based methods allow for monitoring biological processes in real time without using exogenous reagents. In particular, near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) appears as a useful tool to conduct accurate analysis of the changes occurring in the water structure, allowing a discrimination between amorphous and rubbery states. Therefore, its usefulness for the evaluation of preservation processes is evident.In this presentation, the efficiency of prebiotics (lactulose and galacto-oligosaccharides of different composition) as protectants of freeze-dried lactic acid bacteria will be addressed, together with the use of NIR to monitor and evaluate the processes.The awareness of consumers about the ingest of healthy products has strongly contributed to increase the demand of prebiotics. Their use as starters´ protectants appears as a promising tool to exploit novel uses, with great impact in the pharmaceutical and food industries.