A very long generation time (3.53 h) which significantly decreased in the presence of buckwheat flour and oat bran was observed for L. paracasei IMC 502®, as expected by its well-known difficulty to metabolize disaccharides (Desai et al., 2004). The mean doubling time of the two probiotic strains tested were remarkably lower in the combination (SYNBIO®) at the presence of both buckwheat flour and oat bran.