There has been recently increased interest in sorghum to substitute the gluten containing cereals in the diet of people suffering from celiac disease. The response surface methodology was used to determine the influence of malting parameters (degree of steeping, germination temperature and time) on sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench). Each parameter was varied at three levels. Malting attributes, considered important to produce high quality malt for the production of lactic acid fermented beverages, were analyzed. The optimized conditions were: degree of steeping 41%, germination temperature 27℃ after 7 days of germination. Under these conditions, the following values of the studied attributes can be obtained: α-amylase 139 U/g, β-amylase 60 U/g, extract 83.8%, free amino nitrogen 117.8 mg/100 g, Kolbach index 26.6%, water-extractable arabinoxylan 0.3 g/L and vitamin B2 114.9 µg/L. Among the tested parameters, the germination time had the highest effect on malting attributes. Although the activity of amylolytic enzymes α- and β-amylase were low, the value of extract was high and comparable to that of barley malt. The obtained results showed that sorghum malt is a promising raw material for the production of lactic acid fermented beverages.

Summary Driven by increased health awareness among consumers, the production of foods and beverages enriched with functional bioactive components is gaining more attention. Malting and lactic acid fermentation are biotechnological processes having potential for producing functional foods and beverages. Due to various biochemical and enzymatic induced changes in raw materials, malting of cereal grains and probiotic lactic acid fermentation of plant‐based media increases the nutritional quality of treated raw materials. The improved nutritional quality is attributed to the accumulation of functional bioactive components along with the degradation of anti‐nutritional components. The selection of raw materials and process parameters are important factors to be considered for increasing the functional bioactive components such as dietary fibres, antioxidants and probiotics. This review article reports the current knowledge on the changes of bioactive components during malting and lactic acid fermentation using probiotic bacterial strains. Process parameters which affect the concentration of bioactive components in raw materials will also be described.

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Probiotics are considered as significant segments of functional foods. The response surface methodology was used to optimise the fermentation process conditions for the development of a probiotic sorghum wort beverage fermented with Lb. acidophilus LA5. The central composite design was applied with three fermentation parameters such as temperature, inoculation dosage and initial pH. Each parameter was varied at three levels. All parameters had single or interaction significant effects (P < 0.05) on the response variables. The models were highly significant with very low P -values. The optimum fermentation conditions were as follows: temperature 33°C, inoculation dosage 0.8 OD 600 and pH 5.3. Under these conditions, a probiotic beverage with viable bacterial cell concentration of 8.0 log10 cfu mL À1 , final pH 3.7, lactic acid 3.2 g L À1 and total sugar 52.7 g L À1 can be produced. The validation experiments showed a good agreement between the experimental and predicted values. The results showed that sorghum wort is a suitable medium to produce probiotic beverages fermented with Lb. acidophilus LA5.