Influence of Fortification with Extracts of Three Varieties of Iraqi Dates on the Viability of Lactobacillus plantarum in Probiotic Fermented Milk Products

Abstract

Therapeutic fermented milk is product owing to its particular physical, nutritional, probiotic and organoleptic properties containing prebiotics as enhancers of human natural micro-flora and probiotics with their positive effects on health when consumed regularly according to WHO recommendations, This study was conducted to fortified the Milk by the extracts of three variety of Iraqi dates (Zahdi, Khastawi and Khadrawy) on four different percentage levels of treatments T1 (5), T2 (10), T3 (15) and T4 (20) comparing with T0 (without any addition) in order to know its role in the impact on the vitality and numbers of Probiotic Lactobacillus plantarum expressed in terms of growth intensity when used as starter culture In the manufacturing of therapeutic fermented milk and their influence as Prebiotic enhancers, The lowest number appeared in logarithmic counts of viable bacteria cell were in the treatment of control T0 (10.80), comparing with the increase in the supported products with extracts for T4 treatment, which were similar to those of al-Zahdi and al-Kashtawi (12.86), while al-Khudrawi (12.96) and what it means that there is a direct increasing in the logarithmic number of probiotic bacteria with the higher percentage addition of date extracts, and was the most effective with the Khadrawi variety, there is a correlation between the growth of Lb. plantarum bacteria to get the best and smooth texture of the therapeutic fermented milk products, and to maintain the probiotic bacterial number at proper required accounts, That the results obtained give a positive indication of the role of date extracts of these varieties in increasing numbers and enhancing the viability of these probiotic bacteria in fermented milk products.