Whilst minimising cell death during spray drying is important, maintaining viability during storage is necessary. Microcapsules of both strains of L. plantarum produced by spray drying using 10% (w/w) WPI were selected for a storage trial at 20 ± 2 C which was run over an eight week period (Fig. 3).
Our results show that both A17 and B21 were stable with cell counts at around 10.5 log CFU g1.
These storage results for A17 and B21 are promising as LAB are generally known to be stable only at refrigerated conditions (Ghandi, Powell, Broome, & Adhikari, 2013) and in the absence of oxygen.