Techniques For Improving The Survival Of Lactobacillus Acidophilus

Lactobacillus acidophilus, as one of important adjunct probiotics able to offer various benefits to human body, exhibits very low survival ability when this organism is subjected to extreme environments often encountered in food industry. Therefore, it is necessary to find a new way to promote its survival according to new technology like microencapsulation which is now prevalent in food processing.Utilization of 1% alginate sodium and 3% gelatin as wall materials to microencapsulate L. acidophilus NCFM strain was studied. Microencapsulation of L. acidophilus strain NCFM subjected to extreme environments including gastric juice, intestinal juice, acidity condition, pepsin solution, trypsin solution, bile salt and NaCl solution was also studied. The results showed that microencapsules containing the cells of strain NCFM were completely broken out in 36 min, and viable cell counts released reached 1.2×10~10cfu/g. The artificial stimulation of gastric and intestinal environments to treat microencapsulated strain NCFM for 3h showed that the viable counts of microencapsulated cells was significantly higher than the control, reaching 3.9×10~9cfu/mL and 2.5×10~9cfu/mL respectively, whereas the control was only 2.8×10~9cfu/mL and 2.0×10~9cfu/mL. The viability of the microencapsulated strain NCFM treated in pH 2.5 was significantly improved compared to the control (P<0.01). The viable cell counts of microencapsulated cells were 6.4×10~8cfu/mL, whereas those of the control were 2.3×10~8cfu/mL. Exposure strain NCFM microencapsulated to 14g/L pepsin solution showed that compared to the non-microencapsulated cells, the viable cell counts of micro-encapsulated cells were significantly improved, up to 1.4×10~9cfu/mL. In contrast, the viable cell counts of the control treatment were 7.8×10~8cfu/mL.When treated in 0.4%...