Local Cereal Fermented Foods with Probiotic Potentials

Probiotics are microbial food supplements containing live microorganisms which exact beneficial effects on consumers’ health. These live microorganisms may produce or release health promoting compounds in the substrate medium. Most probiotic foods are made of milk, although many locally fermented cereals are known to possess probiotic potentials. Examples of cereal fermented foods with probiotic potentials include pito, kunu-zaki, burukutu and obiolor. Cereal-based fermented food products have long been known to be beneficial to health. Cereal raw materials usually used for probiotic foods are sorghum, millet, and maize. Microorganisms involved in cereal probiotic foods are members of lactic acid bacteria and yeasts which mostly are part of the Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, Leuconostoc, Pediococcus and Bifidobacterium genera where as the yeasts are dominated by mostly Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida species. This review examines some locally fermented cereals with probiotic potentials.

Keywords: Cereals, Fermented foods, Probiotic potentials, Lactic acid bacteria, Yeasts.