The rationale for the development of new drinking yoghurt based on the technology of fermented milk drink functional purpose

The aim of this work is to study and develop new varieties of drinking yogurt based on the technology of fermented milk drinks with added wild plant ingredients. In this case the wild plant ‘actinidia kolomikta’ (A. kolomikta) which grows in the southern Far East of Russia was used. Research on the product range and consumer preferences in retail networks was conducted in the cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok allowing to justify the introduction of the new yogurts. The study shows that among the available yogurts only one fifth is produced in the far East and more than half of the yogurts are produced in the Central part of Russia. Although, yogurt from local raw materials was found in isolated cases, there was no yogurt preparation that uses wild plants. A vast majority of the respondents were interested in and were willing to buy enriched yogurt with functional food ingredients such as those present in fermented milk products prepared with traditional technologies which are used for the preparation of the yogurt of our study. The paper also presents the formulation and technological scheme of the new drink, their physicochemical and organoleptic characteris-tics, and safety performance. The new drinkable yogurt that contains the ‘actinidia kolomik-ta’ fruit complies with the properties of functional food. This type of yogurts are eligible as functional food because they meet the requirements of the operating normative documenta-tion (GOST R 52409-2005) and are probiotic. The functional ingredients providing these properties to the yogurt are the vitamin and mineral components. The study concludes that is viable to obtain high-quality drinking yogurt with functional purposes using the Far Eastern herbal raw ingredient ‘actinidia kolomikta’