Functional starter cultures for meat: a study of technological and probiotic characterisation

The use of starter cultures in meat product technology reduces process time and improves organoleptic performance. The selection of starter cultures involves various stages and is a rather complex process: preliminary characterization in laboratory conditions; selection of the most promising strains; laboratory verification and final verification in large-scale fermentation. Nowadays, the selection of a functional starter culture includes another step related to the evaluation of functional properties. This paper presents an example of using a stepwise approach to select promising starter cultures with probiotic abilities. Researchers obtained several types of pure bacterial cultures from a basic starter and determined indicators of enzymatic and technological activities. Proteolytic activity, nitrate reduction capacity, amount of mucus, pH change, temperature effect on growth, amount of salt, as well as probiotic traits: antibiotic resistance, survival in acidic medium, degree of interaction with water (hydrophobicity), degree of interaction with Salmonella and Escherichia coli were investigated in the isolated strains. The studies were carried out in comparison with some collection strains. As a result, strains from the base inoculate were capable of fermentation at low temperatures and exhibited a particular degree of bio activity, while specific probiotic characteristics in terms of hydrophobicity and survival under gut-mimicking conditions were identified for the collection strains.