Solid State Fermentation of Bee-Collected Pollen

Pollen exists for a time as an independent unit and thus contains most nutrients, essential for life. Man has long been the consumer of pollen and pollen containing food. In many living organisms like insects, pollen is essential for their life cycle, being rich particularly in protein (Wakhle, 1981). Once bee pollen was defined in legislation as food, the nutritional value of this product became important. It contents high concentration of reducing sugars, essential amino acids, fatty acids, minerals and abundant in proteins and vitamins (Campos et al., 2010). The bee pollen is used as a nutritional source for human from ancient times, but the pollen wall structure resists the digestion and decay, so they remain intact in digestive tracks of the animals and the pollen contents will not be released in the digestive tract (T’aiand Cane, 2000). So it is suggested that to increase the digestibility and palatability of pollen it should be treated with chemicals or acids to loosen the pollen wall.