Functional starter cultures for meat: a case study on technological and probiotic characterization

The selection of a starter is a complex process, involving different steps, like a preliminary characterization under laboratory conditions, the selection of the most promising strains, a lab validation and the final validation in a large-scale fermentation; the selection of a functional starter includes a further step, dealing with the assessment of the functional traits. This paper proposes a case study on how to use a step-by-step approach, based on some rapid protocols, to select promising starter cultures with probiotic abilities. Nine strains, isolated from a commercial preparation, were studied in relation to some enzymatic activities (slime and acetoin production, reduction of nitrates, proteolytic activity and hydrolysis of tributyrin), technological (acidification and growth at different temperatures, pHs and salt amounts) and probiotic traits (hydrophobicity, co-aggregation towards Salmonella sp. and Escherichia coli, survival at pH 2.5 and in presence of bile salts, antibiotic resistance) and compared to some collection isolates. As a final step, a multivariate approach was used to select the most promising isolates. The isolates from the commercial preparation were able to perform the fermentation (e.g. acidification) at low temperatures with some interesting traits in terms of bioactivity towards E. coli O157:H7, whilst some interesting probiotic traits in terms of hydrophobicity and survival in conditions that mimicked the gut were found for the collection isolates.