Background

Carotenoids are isoprenoids compounds widely distributed in foods. A difference of carotenoids relative to other food bioactives is that some can be converted into compounds exhibiting vitamin A activity, which is essential for humans. Besides, they are more versatile as they are also natural pigments, antioxidants and can be involved in health-promoting actions. Lately, they are also attracting interest in relation to skin beauty. Their importance for different industry sector (foods, feeds, pharmaceutical, cosmetics) is therefore indisputable. Carotenoids can be obtained by different approaches including extraction from appropriate sources or synthesis.

Scope and approach

Due to their advantages (easiness for the optimization of conditions to obtain higher yields, versatility, etc.) fermentative processes have been long studied and even applied at industrial scale for their production. On the other hand, food fermentation is an ancient approach that usually results in products with new characteristics, enhanced quality and/or better preservation. However, the impact of such processes on the carotenoids present in the foods and their bioavailability are not well understood yet.

Key findings and conclusions

In this work, approaches used to obtain carotenoids by fermentation are reviewed as well as the impact of food fermentation on these compounds. Some research needs are also pinpointed, including further studies on the effect of food fermentations on the potential bioavailability of carotenoids, the production of carotenoids of commercial interest other than β-carotene, lycopene or astaxanthin or that of carotenoid cleavage derivatives.

中文翻译：

---

发酵过程对类胡萝卜素的产生，保留和生物利用度的影响：概述

背景

类胡萝卜素是广泛分布于食品中的类异戊二烯化合物。类胡萝卜素相对于其他食品生物活性物质的不同之处在于，某些类胡萝卜素可以转化为具有维生素A活性的化合物，这对人类至关重要。此外，它们还具有多种用途，因为它们还是天然色素，抗氧化剂，并且可以促进健康。最近，它们也引起了有关皮肤美容的兴趣。因此，它们对于不同行业（食品，饲料，药品，化妆品）的重要性是无可争议的。类胡萝卜素可以通过不同的方法获得，包括从适当的来源提取或合成。

范围和方法

由于它们的优点（易于优化获得更高产量的条件，多功能性等），发酵过程已经进行了长期研究，甚至在工业规模的生产中都得到了应用。另一方面，食品发酵是一种古老的方法，通常会导致产品具有新特性，更高的质量和/或更好的保存性。但是，这种方法对食品中类胡萝卜素的影响及其生物利用度尚未得到很好的了解。

主要发现和结论

在这项工作中，综述了通过发酵获得类胡萝卜素的方法以及食品发酵对这些化合物的影响。还指出了一些研究需求，包括对食品发酵对类胡萝卜素潜在生物利用度的影响，除β-胡萝卜素，番茄红素或虾青素以外的具有商业意义的类胡萝卜素的生产或类胡萝卜素裂解衍生物的进一步研究。