Relevance of application of irradiated starter cultures to production of fermented milk products

Nowadays yogurt, fermented milk products, enriched with biologically active substances, acquire increasingly important significance in people’s diets. The traditional method for producing fermented milk products and yogurt is to ferment the milk using starter cultures. The purpose of this research was to figure out if it is possible to use suspensions of probiotic microbial cultures irradiated with ionizing radiation to produce yoghurt products. Liquid live suspensions of bifidobacteria and lactobacilli, as well as a mixture of bifidobacteria, lactobacilli, propionibacteria and lactic acid streptococci were taken as a research model. The goal was achieved by receiving the yoghurt products enriched with active secondary metabolites due to using the suspensions of lysed cells of different microorganisms. We studied physico-chemical and organoleptic properties of the received products after 1, 7 and 14 days of storage.