With probiotics increasingly included in functional foods, demonstrating stability, and therefore viability, under processing and storage conditions becomes vital. To that end, Evaluation of the stability of Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 during processing and storage of functional foods was published in the International Journal of Food Science & Technology.

The article, authored by Muhammed Majeed, Kalyanam Nagabhushanam, Sankaran Natarajan, Arumugam Sivakumar, Furqan Ali, and Shaheen Majeed, was published online January 20, 2016 (DOI: 10.1111/ijfs.13044) as an Open Access article.

The study focuses on the stability of Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 in functional foods during processing and storage. B. coagulans MTCC 5856 was found to be significantly stable during processing and in respective storage conditions of baked food, beverages, vegetable oil, concentrated glucose syrup and in brewed coffee. The results provided the scientific evidence of B. coagulans MTCC 5856 stability in various functional foods during processing and storage.

The authors found:
B. coagulans MTCC 5856 was found to be stable during processing and storage of baked food.
B. coagulans MTCC 5856 retained 87% viability during coffee brewing.
B. coagulans MTCC 5856 retained 99% viability in apple juice up to 6 months at 4°C and had over 90% viability in glucose syrup up to 24 months at 40°C.

"The most crucial property that a probiotic can have, to confer health benefits, is demonstrated stability,” said Shaheen Majeed, Marketing Director, Sabinsa and one of the authors of the paper. “In this publication, our studies on LactoSpore® prove beyond a doubt that our room temperature shelf-stable probiotic can be incorporated in everyday types of formulations. We're creating more opportunities for our customers with different kinds of probiotic formulations using LactoSpore®, which ultimately benefits the consumer."