Stressors and Food Environment: Toward Strategies to Improve Robustness and Stress Tolerance in Probiotics

The stress encountered by probiotics in food during manufacturing, processing, and storage can reduce their survival, stability, and functionality, thus having a negative impact on the performance of related functional food. A clear knowledge of the stress factors threatening probiotic viability in food, understanding the microbial cell mechanisms underlying stress tolerance, and investigations on how stress resistance may be ameliorated, can contribute to the development of strategies to enhance the potential health benefits of probiotic food. The recent evidence suggesting a consistent influence of the food matrix on the probiotic properties sheds new light on the field of food-related probiotic stress response. In addition, the improvement of probiotic robustness might lead to reconsideration of the use of probiotic strains with interesting health properties but with poor technological characteristics.