Innovative probiotic yogurt: Leveraging green banana peel for enhanced quality, functionality, and sensory attributes.

Yogurt, a popular dairy product renowned for its nutritional benefits and probiotic content, serves as a functional food with potential health-promoting properties. The objective of this study was to investigate whether incorporating green banana peel polyphenol extract (GBPPE) into yogurt formulations enhances the viability and functionality of probiotics while also potentially improving the overall quality and health-promoting properties of the yogurts. GBPPE was extracted and added to the yogurt formulation at 0.0 %, 0.5 %, 1 %, and 2 %. Various physico-chemical properties of GBPPE as well as a range of physical, biochemical, sensory, and microbial assessments of formulated yogurts were carried out. Compared to the control, yogurt containing GBPPE improves functional characteristics by increasing antioxidant activity while having no detrimental impact on physicochemical and organoleptic properties. In terms of antioxidant capabilities, all fortified yogurts showed significantly (p < 0.05) higher total phenolic, flavonoid contents and antioxidant activities than the control yogurt. The addition of GBPPE also affected (p < 0.05) pH, titratable acidity, viscosity, water-binding capacity, syneresis, and total soluble solids, while no significant differences in the color parameters were detected in both control and all fortified yogurts with reduced brightness () and increased redness () of the product. The initial viable counts of all yogurt samples were almost similar, and the maximum and minimum viability loss of probiotics were observed in control and 2 % GBPPE fortified samples, respectively. Sensory assessment revealed that yogurt with 0.5 % banana peel extract outperformed all other treatments except the control. These findings support the sustainable use of GBPPE to create probiotic yogurt with improved physicochemical, microbiological, and sensory qualities.