1. Introduction

Consumers' growing interest in using food to improve their health and wellness has motivated researchers and the food industry to develop new functional products, such as probiotics [1]. Interest in healthy, nutritious, high-end food products has increased worldwide as probiotic-supplemented beverages beneficially affect one or more body functions and have the potential to promote health. Consumers are more aware of the relationship between good nutrition and health, so there is a growing demand for foods that, in addition to nourishing, provide health benefits.

Traditionally, probiotics are incorporated into dairy products. However, nondairy food matrices have been studied as potential carriers for these microorganisms because of the increasing number of individuals who are affected by lactose intolerance, milk protein allergy, galactosemia, and hypercholesterolemia. Seventy-five percent of the world's population is suffering from lactose intolerance [2, 3].

Fruit juices, desserts, and cereal-based products featuring probiotics may be other suitable media for delivering probiotics. Most of the probiotic food products is categorized as functional foods. These products include fruit drinks. According to Corbo [4], functional beverages are nonalcoholic beverages containing

nontraditional ingredients that offer health benefits. Within this context, fruit juices are indeed promising probiotic carriers due to their essential nutrient content along with their appeal to a niche of consumers who already care about healthier habits [5]. The great advantage of fruit juices as a probiotic food is that it is regularly consumed by high portion of the population, which would allow continuity of the beneficial effect from the probiotic microorganisms carried by this food.

However, the viability of the microorganisms is defined during processing, being a necessary application of methods that can maintain or improve their viability and functionality. With this, new technologies have been proposed, among them, the microencapsulation stands out as a promising technique. The microencapsulation can be defined as a process in which small solid particles, liquid droplets, or gases are evolved by a coating layer, or incorporated into a homogeneous or heterogeneous matrix, yielding small capsules with useful properties [6–9].

The microencapsulation of food ingredients in coating materials can be achieved by various methods. Some of them are spray drying, extrusion, freeze drying, fluidized bed, coacervation, and cocrystallization. Among these methods, atomization is the most used in the manufacture of foodstuffs [10, 11].

The spray drying consists of transforming a product in fluid state into solid state in the form of powder, a continuous operation, through a relatively short time [12–14], being also the most used method to encapsulate probiotic bacteria [15].
