Appraisal of lactic acid bacteria as protective cultures

- Exploitation of LAB for food preservation over other conventional methods is justified.
- Production antifungals and antioxidants along with mycotoxin removal by LAB has been discussed.
- LAB based commercial protective cultures and biopreservatives were listed.

Food industry employs various physical and chemical methods to control fungal contamination of food products. However, many fungal strains are defiant to these techniques as a result of various resistance mechanisms they acquired with time. The synergistic actions of various antimicrobial compounds produced by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) prevent the growth of food spoilage bacteria and fungi. Antimicrobial peptides and phenolic compounds from LAB have been successfully applied in wheat grain preservation against fungi. Bread made from sourdoughs fermented with various LAB strains is found to prevent or delay fungal attack. Apart from the mycotoxin removal, some of these bioactive from LAB have antioxidant and anti-cancer potential and it further enhances nutritional value and safety of food products. This review focuses on recent research developments on the bioactive potential of compounds from LAB as well as the commercially available protective cultures and biopreservatives based on LAB and thus tried to substantiate its status as protective culture.