Innovative functional juice enriched with native probiotics for enhanced nutrition and antimicrobial properties.

Introduction: The increasing demand for consuming highly nutritional value foods based on fruits or vegetables in combination with "beneficial" lactic acid bacteria (LAB) expands the research on developing novel functional non-diary delivery vectors.

Methods: In this study, the native UTNCys5-4 (Cys5-4) and commercial ATCC8014 (LP) strains have been targeted for probiotic properties in a novel designed tropical beverage containing yellow passionfruit (maracuyá) and coconut (MC). Furthermore, the quality of the newly fortified beverages, MCA (MC + Cys5-4) and MCB (MC + LP), was evaluated, along with their antimicrobial activity against two foodborne pathogens.