Microencapsulação de Pediococcus pentosaceus P107 pela técnica de spray drying utilizando como material de parede soro de queijo, pectina e xantana

Abstract

There is a growing search for new probiotic foods, such as dairy and non dairy bases, with a high survival rate capable of promoting health benefits for consumers. For this, the isolation and characterization of microorganisms has been widely studied, as well as the search for technologies able to store and promote the protection of these cells in adverse conditions and, consequently, to potentiate their added benefits. As an alternative microencapsulation is used by spray drying, a low cost technique that allows both drying, aiming preservation, and encapsulation to protect against adverse conditions. Different encapsulating materials are used and tested, such as pectin, whey and xanthan gum. The objective of this study was to investigate the use of pectin associated whey and xanthan as encapsulating agents of Pediococcus pentosaceus P107 by spray drying. For this the cells of Pediococcus pentosaceus P107 were cultured in bench bioreactor and after addition to the encapsulating materials, whey, pectin and xanthan were added. All solutions were dried by the spray dryer equipment with inlet temperature of 100 ° C, outlet 68 ° C with feed flow in 250 mL / h. According to the results the efficient technique in the production of three different microcapsules containing Pediococcus pentosaceus P107, which promoted different levels of protection the cells in the tests of storage, passage through the gastrointestinal tract and heat treatment. Of note is the whey and xanthan (WX) microcapsule that provided protection to Pediococcus pentosaceus P107 cells in high cell viability, and also improved storage stability at -20 and 4 ° C. At the temperature of 25 ° C the whey microcapsule (W) and the free cell presented viability during the period of 110 days, being found cell counts above the minimum established for probiotics (> 6 Log CFU.g-1) in food. As for the thermal resistance test, the microcapsule of whey and pectin (WP) was effective in the protection, presenting high cellular viability in the heat treatment (72 ° C / 15 sec). In addition, all microcapsules showed high encapsulation efficiency, above 90%. It was concluded that the technique and the choice of the parameters were efficient in the preservation of Pediococcus pentosaceus P107 cells and it was also clearly efficient, together with the choice of wall materials, to provide additional protection to the cells through microencapsulation, performed. These results suggest the application of this microencapsulated microorganism over a wide temperature range, which is a positive feature for the future use of this microorganism with probiotic potential.