Prebiotic effect of arabinoxylan extracts obtained from whole wheat flour

PAESANI, C.; SALVUCCI, E.; PEREZ, G.; LEBLANC, JEAN GUY

Amsterdam

Simposio; 12th Symposium on Lactic Acid Bacteria; 2017

Whole grain wheat flour is obtained from the complete grain, having a higher content of dietary fiber than white flour. Arabinoxylans (AX) are part of this dietary fiber and they have received attention given their emergent prebiotic character. Prebiotics are nondigestible components that stimulate the growth and activity of beneficial bacteria of the intestinal microbiome, mainly Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus.The prebiotic effect of four AX extracts from different wheat cultivars was evaluated. Quantitative scores were calculated to describe the extent to which AX extracts support selective growth of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus in a defined media. Inulin was included as a positive control. The prebiotic activity (PA) was determined considering growing ratio relative to glucose of probiotics strains as well as of the enteric bacteria Escherichia coli when AX were used as the principle carbon source. Moreover, the bacterial growth of Clostridium and Bacteroides strains were assessed. For the prebiotic index (PI), bacterial growths of bifidobacteria, lactobacilli, clostridia and bacteroides were entered into the PI equation in order to determine a quantitative PI score. All the AX extracts promoted a higher relative growth (PA values) for lactic acid bacteria compared with inulin resulting in positive values for the four extracts assayed. The PI values for three of the extracts were higher than the obtained with commercial food grade inulin indicating that these extracts could be used as a prebiotic food ingredient and it becomes interesting to evaluate their ability to modulate microbiome in vivo.