Mid-Infrared (MIR) Spectroscopy for the quantitative detection of cow’s milk in buffalo milk
Received: Jan 28, 2022; Revised: Mar 12, 2022; Accepted: Apr 01, 2022
Published Online: May 10, 2022
Abstract
In Italy, buffalo mozzarella is a largely sold and consumed dairy product. The fraudulent adulteration of buffalo milk with cheaper and more available milk of other species is very frequent. In the current study, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, in combination with multivariate analysis by partial least square (PLS) regression, was applied to quantitatively detect the adulteration of buffalo milk with cow milk. To enhance the heterogeneity, cow and buffalo bulk milk was collected for a period of over three years from different dairy farms. A total of 119 samples were used for the analysis to generate 17 different concentrations of buffalo-cow milk mixtures. This procedure was used to enhance variability and to properly randomize the trials. The obtained calibration model showed an R<sup>2</sup> ≥ 0.98 (R<sup>2</sup>cal.=0.99861; RMSEC=2.04; R<sup>2</sup>val.=0.99803; RMSEP=2.84; RMSECV=2.44) suggesting that this method could be successfully applied in the dairy industry as a rapid and cost-effective screening for detecting and quantifying the adulteration of buffalo milk with cow’s milk.