ABSTRACT
Fermentation as a food conservation method has an ancestral history, and some of those products are highly consumed nowadays. With the rise in the awareness of health improvement through the consumption of functional foods, the segment of fermented dairy-based products such as probiotics for the attention of gastrointestinal diseases made a significant market breakthrough. Furthermore, the use of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) with probiotic characteristics was incorporated as the most important microorganisms in these products. Nevertheless, consumer demands for non-dairy probiotics have motivated the need to explore other potential substrates like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and cereals for the formulation of probiotic products. Cereals could be used to design new cereal-based fermented beverages with probiotic characteristics if these formulations fulfill probiotic requirements and have acceptable physicochemical characteristics and organoleptic properties. Thus, food technology encounters several challenges during the development of novel products. Therefore, the incorporation of multidisciplinary fields of research will aid the creation of novel fermented products within the segment of functional foods.
