Background. A healthy lifestyle, which has been promoted in recent years, is manifested through increased demand for foodstuffs the biggest nutritional value and specific health-promoting features. For this reason, consumers often choose functional food, which, apart from the nutritional effect, has a beneficial effect on one or more functions of the body, proven by scientific  research. The aim of the research was to develop an innovative chocolate product with a porous core enriched with functional ingredients. In order to select the probiotic strain best adapted to  the production conditions of chocolate dragées, a detailed characterization of 20 bacteria from the genera Lactiplantibacillus, Lacticaseibacillus and Limosilactobacillus included in the study  was carried out, i.e. phenotypic and genotypic identification, drug susceptibility testing, resistance analysis to bile salts and gastric juice, adherence to intestinal epithelial cells, testing of antibacterial activity. The strains were also subjected to quantitative analyses in terms of their survival under industrial conditions. The influence of increased temperature and humidity, low  pH, the presence of oxygen, the addition of a prebiotic and the type of industrial medium on the growth of probiotic bacteria was studied. The method of producing a chocolate dragée composed  of a chocolate core, aerated with gas, containing a probiotic strain a prebiotic, and sugar coating was also developed.
Results and conclusions. The conducted research allowed the selection of strain of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum PL8 and the development of a method of its application to chocolate dragées in  the liquid microencapsulated form in the fat carrier of the graft. The obtained chocolate product, containing, apart from the probiotic, also a prebiotic (glucooligosaccharide), meets the  requirements of WHO/FAO regarding the content of probiotic bacteria in food, i.e. the number of bacteria not less than 10⁶ CFU/g throughout the shelf life. The developed chocolate dragées  display unique health-promoting properties and attractive organoleptic qualities.