ARTHUR C. OUWEHAND
Member of AgroFOOD industry hi-tech’s Scientific Advisory Board
Danisco Sweeteners, Kantvik, 02460, Finland

The Probiotics, Prebiotics & New Foods conference is an event that is held every other year in Rome. Over the years, it has grown out to one of the main probiotic conferences in Europe. Although the delegates are still to a substantial extent Italian, the international participation has grown since the first meetings. On the other hand, the substantial Italian participation is not surprising; besides the geographic reason, there is also a scientific rationale. As Prof. Lorenzo Morelli pointed out, Italy is the source of a majority of publications on probiotics and is the leading market for probiotics in Europe.
The conference had many parallel sessions, which made it challenging to choose. Two interesting sessions were devoted to short oral presentations. These featured the latest results of various studies; from in vitro to human intervention trials. Which made these sessions actually more interesting, and more information dense, then the large and longer plenary lectures which mainly presented reviews of research areas.
Despite the name of the conference, much of the presentations were devoted to the human intestinal microbiota as presented by, for example, Pro ...