Probiotics termed as functional food are gaining more and more interest of the food market. Lactobacilli, bifidobacteria, Bacillus coagulans are the frequently used probiotic strains, which have been demonstrated to modify and reinstate the intestinal flora, beneficially affecting the host health. This is mainly caused by altering the pH value, since they can convert diverse carbohydrates into lactic acid (LA). The probiotics are, therefore, often used to produce LA with anaerobic fermentation in food and chemical industry. In these microorganisms, Bacillus coagulans is a competitive candidate due to its thermophilic and spore-forming property. It can grow from 30 to 60°C and convert the carbohydrates via homolactic fermentation to L-lactic acid with high yield and optical purity. In our study, different operating modes and carbon sources were applied to investigate the fermentation of Bacillus coagulans. In the membrane bioreactor system, a stable continuous production of LA was achieved with the highest productivity of 8.6 g L-1 h-1 and the highest yield of 0.87 g g-1 with pure glucose as a carbon source. This productivity is 2.5 times as high as the best overall productivity obtained in batch fermentations [1]. When the raw product of prebiotic fructooligosaccharides (FOS), which is a mixture of FOSs, residual sucrose, fructose and glucose [2], was applied as the carbon source, Bacillus coagulans showed a preference for the glucose than the other components, leading to a reduction of glucose in the FOS product and therefore to a reduction of the glycemic index of the mixture. Additionally, at the end of the fermentation, the population of the endospores achieved 1.2 × 108 mL-1 with the sporulation rate up to 81.8%.

Utilization of probiotic Bacillus coagulans in the production of fructooligosaccharides (FOS): reduction of the glycemic index and formation of the endospores

2019 Spring National Meeting

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