Abstract

Health consciousness coupled with enhanced health care cost has led consumer’s inclination towards functional foods. Documented health benefits have projected probiotics as a new functional ingredient in the current era of self-care and complementary medicine. It has been established that the probiotic viability is necessary for the exhibition of health benefits but is lost during processing, storage and gastrointestinal transit. Probiotic viability can be retained with the adoption of spray drying encapsulation technique and better survival of the encapsulated probiotics than the free cells in the food matrix have been reported. Major challenges faced during the encapsulation of probiotic by spray drying are modulation of processing parameter, selection of probiotic strains and coating materials and stability during gastric transit. Proper selection of probiotic strains and cell wall materials, modulation of technological parameters of spray drying and storage conditions would yield spray dried encapsulated probiotics with greater viability. Spray dried encapsulated probiotics had higher viability than free cells and its supplementation may be a practical alternative for better retention of viability and functionality of probiotics during the formulation of functional foods.

Keywords:Functional food; Health benefits; Microencapsulation; Probiotic; Spray drying encapsulation