Isolation and Characterization of Potential Probiotic Strains Isolated from Traditional Indian Fermented Foods

Abstract

The word probiotic comes from the Greek “pro bios”, meaning „for life‟ and was first used by Lilly and Stillwell (1965) to describe “substances secreted by one microorganism that stimulate the growth of another (Sayes et al., 2018). Probiotics are defined by WHO/FAO (2006) as “live microorganisms, which when consumed in adequate amounts confer health benefit to the host”. The most commonly used probiotic strains belongs to heterogeneous group of lactic acid bacteria (LAB); Lactobacillus, Enterococcus, Streptococcus, Leuconostoc, Lactococcus, Pediococcus, Bifidobacterium and yeast Saccharomyces boulardii. LAB, especially Lactobacillus, have received much attention due to their “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) status and because of their health International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 8 Number 03 (2019) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com