Antonietta Maoloni, Federica Cardinali, Vesna Milanović, Andrea Osimani, Maria Cristina Verdenelli, Maria Magdalena Coman, Lucia Aquilanti
Considering the increasing consumer demand for vegan and vegetarian health foods, different vegetables have been already exploited to produce non-dairy probiotic foods. In addition to being rich in bioactive compounds, sea fennel ( L.), also known as rock samphire, represents a valuable candidate in the production of probiotic-enriched foods, and, to the authors' knowledge, it has not yet been explored as carrier for probiotics. Hence, the present study was aimed at evaluating the survival of a commercially available probiotic formulation, SYNBIO, and IMC 509 in an artificially acidified, pasteurized sea fennel preserve in brine during a refrigerated storage of 44 days. Despite slight reductions in the microbial loads, at the end of the storage, both the probiotic formulations showed loads higher than 7.0 Log CFU g of sea fennel or mL of brine, above the recommended administration dose to exert beneficial health effects. Thus, acidified sea fennel sprouts in brine represent a potential vehicle for probiotics delivery to humans.
