MICROENCAPSULATION OF L. FERMENTUM ISOLATED FROM TRADITIONAL DAIRY PRODUCTS AND ITS STABILITY ON EXPOSURE TO SIMULATED GASTROINTESTINAL CONDITIONS

Abstract

The physiological state of food may affect the survival potential of health promoting microorganisms. The current research was thus undertaken for comparing the invitro stability of two similar species of L. fermentum isolated from two different dairy products. The isolates were analyzed for their viability after microencapsulation in sodium alginate and were also compared using the non-encapsulated strain in simulated gastric and intestinal conditions. Viability of the cultures were also compared against reference standard (i.e) Lactobacillus acidophilus procured from MTCC Chandigarh. The percentage log reduction of non- encapsulated cultures i.e curd, raw milk and MTCC was 58.32%,58.28%,58.43% while that of encapsulated cultures was 10.19%, 10.03% and 11.18% as observed in gastric juice. The log reduction of non -encapsulated cultures as observed was 3.80%, 3.10% and 2.23% for curd raw milk and MTCC cultures respectively while that of encapsulated cultures was 1.54%, 1.52% and 1.16%in simulated intestinal conditions. The raw milk isolate was found with slightly better adaptation in response to the viability both in case of gastric and intestinal juice. The result thus justifies the physiological state of food which may affect the osmotic response and stress of similar microflora although isolated from two different food consortiums.