“…Near infrared and mid-IR spectroscopy have been extensively used for the analysis of several milk components such as protein, fat, moisture, sugars, casein, cholesterol, and contaminants such as tetracycline (Rodriguez-Otero et al, 1997;O'Sullivan et al, 1999;Tsenkova et al, 1999;Luginbü hl, 2002;Paradkar and Irudayaraj, 2002;Sivakesava and Irudayaraj, 2002;Sorensen et al, 2003). Near-infrared spectroscopy has been widely studied for the rapid determination of major cheese constituents such as protein, fat, moisture, DM, and total solids (Frank and Birth, 1982;Wehling and Pierce, 1988;Pierce and Wehling, 1994;Rodriguez-Otero et al, 1995;McQueen et al, 1995;Wittrup and Noøgaard, 1998;Adamopoulos et al, 2001;Č urda and Kukačková , 2004). On the contrary, few studies have reported the application of midIR spectroscopy for cheese analysis because of difficulties in the sampling procedures due to the lack of homogeneity of the components in the cheese (McQueen et al, 1995).…”