Effect Of Lactobacillus Plantarum Fermentation On The Quality And Function Of Ginger

Ginger is the tender stem of zingiberaceae plants, it’s the traditional medicineand food plants with high nutrition health care value in Asia. Ginger is often used ascondiment, and the edible method is relatively simple. Hence, it has a greatsignificance to increase the development and utilization of ginger resources. Thisstudy aims to improve the sensory properties of ginger by traditional lactic acidbacteria fermentation, and study the biological functions of fermented ginger, andprovide a reference for extending the application of ginger in the field of food andmedicine.Our research adopted Lactobacillus plantarum to ferment ginger at37oC, andthe optimal fermentation time was obtained. TPA analysis was used for the texturedetection of ginger after fermentation and the GC-MS/MS for analysis of the effectof fermentation on ginger aroma components. The water soluble flavonoids contentand the free amino acids of ginger before and after fermentation were detected.Moreover, biological some function of ginger before and after fermentation, such asantibacterial, anti-oxidative and antitumor, were studied.The result has shown that the taste of ginger was improved after fermented withLactobacillus plantarum. The optimal fermentation time is10days. The result ofsensory evaluation indicated that indices such as brittleness, aroma, taste and colorcomposite scores achieved the highest. The result of TPA analysis corresponded withthe results of sensory evaluation, the chewing and hardness showed high scores infermented ginger for10days. With fermentation, aroma component types of gingerincreased when compared with unfermented samples. The kinds of free amino acidand total content of fermented ginger were higher than that of unfermented ginger.There were11kinds of free amino acid in unfermented ginger, and total content was0.063mg. After the fermentation, the kinds of free amino acid increased to16, andthe total content was0.449mg. Besides, the content of water-soluble flavonoids inginger was0.0064mg/mL, which was higher than unfermented samples. In addition,the antibacterial rate of unfermented ginger on Escherichia coli O157:H7,Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans were50.28%,54.38%and13.7%,respectively. In contrast, that rate of fermented ginger were77.94%,96.96%and 81.51%, respectively. The antioxidant and anticancer effects of ginger wereobviously improved by fermentation.In conclusion, the taste and biological activity of ginger were improved throughthe traditional fermentation method, a research model for evaluation of fermentedfood quality and function was established. All these studies can offer references forthe application of ginger and other medicine edible ingredients in food andpharmaceutical health care products in the prospective work in future.