Probiotics are one of the most promising ingredients for the production of functional foods or nutra-
ceutics. However, when incorporating probiotics into a food matrix, the main problem is their low
resistance to different environmental and technological conditions.
Microencapsulation is a good method in order to protect probiotics. The aim of this study was to apply
the Ionic Internal Gelation Technology to protect Lactobacillus fermentum CECT5716.
We evaluate the encapsulation efficiency of two different formulations, the first one with alginate (5 g/
100 mL) as a supporting material and the second one with a mix of alginate (5 g/100 mL) and unmodified
starch (1 g/100 mL).
Results show that the viability of probiotic decreases in 3 log cell numbers in the case of the formulae
with alginate and in 0.3 log in the formulae with alginate and starch. Moreover, the last one allows us to
obtain a suitable particle size (