An enzyme-based assay in combination with the most probable number (MPN) technique was developed for the enumeration of bifidobacteria. The assay employs the detection of fructose-6-phosphate phosphoketolase (F6PPK) activity as an indicator of the presence of bifidobacteria. The method was validated against viable counts and optimized with respect to selective media in order to quantitatively assess bifidobacteria in dairy products and other probiotic preparations. Several commercial products and homemade fermented milks were analyzed. Counts of bifidobacteria ranged from 10⁷ to 10⁸ MPN/ml in commercial products and homemade fermented milks Commercial starters provided by Argentinean industries had between 10⁷ and 10¹¹ MPN/ml. The results obtained in this study suggest that the combination of F6PPK activity determination and the MPN methodology allows an accurate determination of Bifidobacterium in pure cultures, dairy products, and other probiotic preparations.
Información general
Fecha de publicación:diciembre 2001
Idioma del documento:Inglés
Revista:Journal of Food Protection; vol. 64, no. 12
Institución de origen:Facultad de Ciencias Exactas; Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Criotecnología de Alimentos
Excepto donde se diga explícitamente, este item se publica bajo la siguiente licencia Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)