Beverages as a Vehicle for Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics: Properties, Processing and Health Impact

Dear Colleagues,

Consumer interest and demand are increasing worldwide towards functional foods of health-promoting attributes. As a macrotrend, beverages pose nowadays as one of the most attractive functional food categories as they can be enriched with nutrients and bioactive compounds while being most convenient in meeting consumer demands for ease of distribution and storage. In particular, probiotic-, prebiotic-, and fiber-rich functional beverages are currently an emerging topic in research and industries.

Probiotics are living microorganisms which can colonize the gut when administrated at adequate amounts exerting health-promotion functions. Prebiotics are compounds that are preferentially taken up by probiotics, thus providing them with competitive advantages against other microbes while contributing directly to consumers health. Special attention is merged to non-digestible food fractions which allow specific changes, both in probiotic composition and/or activity in the gut microbiome. In addition, prebiotics play a significant role in the human immune system, especially against infection and inflammation. Symbiotics include combined probiotic and prebiotic food matrices that can act synergistically modulating the intestinal microbiota. In the world of biotics, besides probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics, the denomination of “postbiotics” has appeared recently to describe soluble metabolites released by food-grade microorganisms that can provide beneficial effects to the consumer through their bioactivities. Several aspects related to postbiotics and their bioactivities remain unexplored up until nowadays.

These enhanced beverages provide a promising step in modulating the bioavailability and bioaccessibility of certain micronutrients that play a key role in maintaining human health. Complementary approaches to thrive probiotics include applications of prebiotics and synbiotics, as means to promote sustainable shelf-life of beverages.

In light of the numerous advances made in recent years on the above research fields, this Special Issue will extensively cover the topics of applications of processing, storage and packaging technologies, microbiological and sensory aspects, functional properties, quality and safety, nutrition and health benefits of probiotic and prebiotic beverages. This Special Issue is also open for submission of concept papers, reviews and original research manuscripts.

Scientists are warmly invited to submit their original contributions (reviews, original research papers, short communication etc.) to this Special Issue, which will definitely be of interest to a wide range of readers.

Dr. Antonia Terpou
Dr. Sanju Bala Dhull
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Beverages is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• probiotics
• prebiotics
• synbiotics
• postbiotics
• fermented beverages
• beverage quality and safety
• health promotion