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Globally, consumer’s inclination towards functional foods had noticed due to their greater health consciousness coupled with enhanced health-care cost. The fact that probiotics could promote a healthier gut microbiome led projection of probiotic foods as functional foods and had emerged as an important dietary strategy for improved human health. It had established that ice cream was a better carrier for probiotics than fermented milked due to greater stability of probiotics in ice cream matrix. Global demand for ice cream boomed and probiotic ice cream could have been one of the most demanded functional foods. The purpose of this paper was to review the technological aspects and factors affecting probiotic viability and to standardize methodology to produce functional probiotic ice cream.

Attempt was made to search the literature (review and researched papers) to identify diverse factors affecting the probiotic viability and major technological challenge faced during formulation of probiotic ice cream. Keywords used for data searched included dairy-based functional foods, ice cream variants, probiotic ice cream, factors affecting probiotic viability and health benefits of probiotic ice cream.

Retention of probiotic viability at a level of >10⁶ cfu/ml is a prerequisite for functional probiotic ice creams. Functional probiotic ice cream could have been produced with the modification of basic mix and modulating technological parameters during processing and freezing. Functionality can be further enhanced with the inclusion of certain nutraceutical components such as prebiotics, antioxidant, phenolic compounds and dietary fibres. Based upon reviewed literature, suggested method for the manufacture of functional probiotic ice cream involved freezing of a probiotic ice cream mix obtained by blending 10% probiotic fermented milk with 90% non-fermented plain ice cream mix for higher probiotic viability. Probiotic ice cream with functional features, comparable with traditional ice cream in terms of technological and sensory properties could be produced and can crop up as a novel functional food.

Probiotic ice cream with functional features may attract food manufacturers to cater health-conscious consumers.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the synergy of corporate governance (CG) with intellectual capital (IC) and to assess the moderating effect of profitability indicator on the aforementioned synergy using agency theory, resource-based view theory and theory of financial ratios as conceptual frameworks.

The sample includes 72 companies with a six-year data set drawn from the KSE 100 Index companies of Pakistan. In addition, the study adopts Pulic’s model to compute the efficiency of IC. The research uses fixed-effect panel regression for analysis and two-stage least squares regression (2SLS) to address endogeneity issues in the estimation process.

The results showcased that chief executive officer duality possesses negligible impact on IC efficiency (ICE), while independent directors, audit committees and board size tend to attain a strong association with IC. Moreover, it postulates that the moderation of return on equity strengthens the path between all governance components and ICE significantly.

The research uses a 2SLS regression analysis to explore how CG practices take hold on the effectiveness of IC in Pakistan while taking into account the moderating impact of profitability. The findings add to the body of knowledge on the value that strong governance practices have on businesses and society.