Chapter4 - Indigenous probiotic microorganisms in fermented foods

Fermented foods are reservoirs of potentially probiotic microorganisms that possess technological features even better than those of human-derived probiotic microorganisms, being more adapted to hostile conditions encountered in the food matrices of origin. For these reasons, numerous studies are dealing with the isolation, technological, functional and safety characterization of indigenous microorganisms from fermented foods. In this context, fermented milk and dairy products are the most studied and known as reservoir of probiotics, but non-dairy fermented foods are also arising as vehicle of potentially probiotic microorganisms. Furthermore, the high microbial diversity displayed by these fermented foods provides new opportunities to search for new strains with health-promoting and technological features. In this chapter we provide an overview on the potentially probiotic microorganisms isolated from fermented products, shaping the future of new candidates to be explored for their probiotic activity in vivo and thus to be used in functional food production.