Ghee, the clarified butter fat being the costliest fat among other edible oils and fats in India, prone to adulteration with highly manipulated cheaper oils/fats, especially during lean season. The present investigation carried on triglycerides profile of one of the latest components of the adulterant fat i.e. RM (Reichert-Meissl)adjuster, has been exploited to check the adulteration of ghee with a newly emerged highly manipulated fat. Using standardized (S)-limits specified by the ISO/IDF for cow milk fat, the minimum level of detection of the adulterant fat was observed as 7.5%. However, in case of buffalo ghee, due to non-availability of the ISO/IDF limits, the detection of this adulterant fat in buffalo ghee was not possible. Gas chromatograms showed specific signature peaks of large size in the retention time region of 4.5 to 6.5 min for RM-adjuster and adulterant fat, whereas no such peaks were observed in pure cow and buffalo ghee samples. The new approach of zooming in and superimposing of selected peaks in the chromatograms of triglycerides of suspected ghee has been used as a strategy to find adulterant fat's presence. Through this approach, the addition of RM-adjusted highly manipulated foreign fat (adulterant fat) to the tune of even 0.5% could be achieved in both cow as well as buffalo ghee.
Triglyceride (TG) profiling was explored to distinguish cow ghee from buffalo ghee to check their admixing. Cow and buffalo butter was clarified at 110, 130 and 150°C to obtain ghee. Temperature of clarification did not show any significant effect on TG profile. Cow ghee showed maxima at TG C38 and C52. Buffalo ghee exhibited maxima at C38 and C50 unlike cow ghee. Cow ghee samples showed a higher TG content of C42 to C54, whereas buffalo ghee samples were associated with a greater content of C26 to C38. Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering showed two ghee types as distinct separate clusters.
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