Digestibility and structure changes of rice starch following co-fermentation of yeast and Lactobacillus strains

Rice is sometimes fermented with microorganisms to develop health-promoting foods, but the contribution of a short-term fermentation (a necessary step for fermented rice cake-preparation) to properties of rice starch is not resolved yet. The effects of microorganism fermentation with different amount of starter cultures on multi-scale structures and digestibility of rice starch were investigated. The amount of starter cultures significantly affected structures and digestibility of fermented starch. The fermentation with a lower amount of starter cultures induced starch degradation (corrosion of starch granules, reduction of lamellar orders and compactness, decrease in crystallinity, double helix, short ranger-ordered structures, and molar mass) and a slightly reassembly, which increased the content of slowly digestible starch (SDS). While, the fermentation produced more starch fractions with Mw between 0.60 × 10⁷ g/mol and 1.50 × 10⁷ g/mol as the amount of starter cultures increased, and these starch molecules tended to reassemble and form more ordered multi-scale structures including double helical and short range-ordered structures, starch lamellar orders and compactness, which elevated SDS content. The SDS content of fermented starchy foods could be improved via controlling starch reassembly and multi-scale ordered structures through modulating the amount of starter cultures during fermentation.