Bioprotective cultures for use in dairy products

With ever expanding population, food safety and maintenance of its quality remains one of the biggest challenges for agriculture and food processing sector in the present time. Its high time to look for new antimicrobial agents and their implementation through better technologies to control microbial spoilage and foodborne diseases. Bio-protection of food products especially fermented ones, via lactic and propionic acid bacteria has gained much attention in the last few decades. Recent research has shown the anti-fungal potential of lactic acid bacteria, and propionibacteria for the protection of fermented dairy products such as yogurt, cheese and sour cream. In-situ antagonistic activity of these bioprotective cultures in food matrix itself has tremendous capacity for reducing the wastage of fermented dairy products. Deep and extensive studies have shown that metabolites of LAB and propionibacteria act in synergy to inhibit fungal contamination in fermented dairy products. However, availability of such cultures or their metabolites at commercial scale, play a critical role in their widespread use at different stages of food chain. In this review, recent literature on the potential of lactic acid bacteria and propionic acid bacteria as bioprotective culture, their mechanism of action has been summarized. Recent applications of bioprotective cultures in dairy products and constraints in this field, have also been discussed.