Bulletin of the IDF N° 411/ 2007: Selective enumeration of bifidobacteria in dairy products: Development of a standard method

Publication description

Bifidobacteria play an important role as probiotic microorganisms in fermented dairy products. Usually, culture methods are used for routine examination of these products. As far as bifidobacterial enumeration is considered, several methodologies have been proposed during the last two decades, however, with limited applicability due to laborious procedures and/or lacking selectivity. According to experience, the accompanying microflora often negatively influences the discrimination among the different groups of bacteria contained in a product. On this account, a project team within the IDF “Lactic acid bacteria” group elaborated a procedure for bifidobacterial enumeration and a draft standard method. This report describes in detail, how the method was developed and assessed for its performance based on selectivity, reproducibility and repeatability. It can be used as a roadmap for developing a microbiological standard method.
Keywords: Bifidobacteria, probiotics, dairy products, colony count technique, collaborative trials, standardization