Salameh D., Nigro F., Colucci Cante R., Passannanti F., Gallo M., Budelli A., Marzocchella A., Nigro R., 2019, Fermentation of Rice Flour Supernatant Using Lactobacillus Paracasei Cba L74, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 75, 289-294.
The concept of functional food has evolved throughout the years. These days we define a food to be functional when it confers a benefit to human health. Lactic acid fermentation is one of the most important and used food processing technologies to produce this type of food. Fermentation of Lactobacillus Paracasei CBA L74 - a homofermentative, gram positive probiotic - on rice flour suspension has been proved to be a successful route to produce functional foods. However, the process was characterized by high energy consumption, low air sparging and complex expensive metabolite separation. A research program has been developed to carry out L. Paracasei fermentation using a low viscosity medium based on rice flour suspension. Fractionation of rice flour suspension provided a medium characterized by low amounts of solids and nutrients at concentration high that support the microorganism growth. Fermentations were carried in a 1L batch reactor equipped with an agitation systems designed to provide uniform mixing. The composition of the medium; cells, glucose, protein, pH, metabolite production as well as L. Paracasei’ growth trend was analysed throughout the process. Fermentation on supernatant obtained from rice flour and water suspension through centrifugation were possible to produce a potential probiotic functional food with a good bacterial charge.
