Challenges and opportunities for the production of lactic acid bacteria inoculants aimed for ensiling processes

Abstract

The use of bacterial inoculants for ensiling based on lactic acid bacteria (LAB) to obtain conserved forages has become an alternative for the improvement of milk and meat productivity in cattle, specifically by optimizing the nutritional and microbial quality of animal feed. LAB inoculant production involves microbial and technological aspects such as biomass obtention, the use of cocultures, the inclusion of probiotics, the production of antimicrobial peptides, operational methods used in bioreactors, and the formulation of the end product to be commercialized to farmers. This review explores the technical aspects of the manufacture of bacterial inoculants, from the main features desired in LAB for ensiling purposes to the alternatives of the bioprocess involved.

Keywords:

• Bacterial inoculant
• lactic acid bacteria
• fermentation
• production process
• silage

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank the Colombian Corporation of Agricultural Research (AGROSAVIA) for supporting the execution of the research project “Bacterial inoculant based on native BAL for silage conservation.” Also, we want to thank the Food Science and Technology Institute (ICTA, in Spanish) from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the National University of Colombia for supporting the development of the PhD thesis associated with the project formerly mentioned.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financed by the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (grant numbers: Tv17 and Tv18).