Spray drying of dairy bacteria: New opportunities to improve the viability of bacteria powders

The most frequently used technique for dehydration of dairy bacteria is freeze drying. Of the other possible preservation techniques used in the dairy industry to produce large amounts of dairy ingredients at commercially viable processing costs, spray drying is one of the main processing tools and the cost is 10 times lower than that of freeze drying. In this work, some examples are presented for different species of dairy bacteria with respect to spray-drying processes (as an alternative approach to freeze drying) and storage conditions for production of powdered bacterial cultures with high viability (100%) and count (1010 g−1). The advantages and disadvantages of this new approach (viability, contamination, yield during process and storage) are discussed.