The Use of near Infrared Spectroscopy for Determination of Adulteration and Contamination in Milk and Milk Powder: Updating Knowledge

Abstract

This review aims to update information on the use of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy in identifying and quantifying the presence of adulterants and contaminants in milk and milk powder. Milk and milk products are recognised excellent sources of nutrition globally and are of great economic importance. In recent years, there have been a number of documented incidences of both deliberate adulteration and accidental contamination of foodstuffs. There is a clear need to detect these by a fast, accurate and non-destructive methodology.This has stimulated researchers to explore the possibility of applying NIR technology for their detection. NIR spectroscopy is a logical technique for use as it offers a rapid, low-cost and convenient analysis of key constituents. Fast responses are particularly important to industry, where an answer is needed within minutes. Most important, apart from its powerful prediction capability, the non-destructive nature of this technique is very useful for fast analysis in on-line and at-line inspections and authentication of food. NIR has the potential for detecting milk and milk powder adulteration by both economically motivated adulterants such as melamine as well as contaminants that may have been introduced unintentionally such as microorganisms. In comparison with mid-infrared and Raman, NIR spectroscopy allows the detection of contaminants and their quantification faster and with the same, or better, performances. Furthermore, NIR instrumentation is, in general, less sensitive to environmental conditions and is highly flexible. In particular, for the detection of a very low level of contamination, further investigations are warranted to identify the basis of the calibrations and test their performance when put into routine use. Consumers must have confidence in the analyses which ensure safe and genuine dairy products.

Infrared Spectroscopy‐Based Metabolomic Analysis for the Detection of Preharvest Sprouting in Grain

“…NIR has a slight advantage over MIR for use in grain research in that it is already widely used in the food, feed, and agricultural industries for quantitative analysis of parameters such as protein, moisture, and fat. It has also recently shown promise as a tool for identifying adulterants in food samples (Cattaneo and Holroyd 2013). NIR can penetrate much deeper into a sample than far IR or MIR radiation, but the resulting output is made up of broad overlapping spectra that, without chemometrics, can mask the specific details and only provide broad categorization of the major chemical groups present.…”

Quick vacuum drying of liquid samples prior to ATR‐FTIR spectral collection improves the quantitative prediction: a case study of milk adulteration

“…(). Being great sources of nutrition worldwide, milk and milk products have crucial economic reputation (Cattaneo & Holroyd, ). Adulteration of milk does not only lower the quality of milk and dairy products but also jeopardises consumers’ well‐being.…”

“…These methods are based on fluorescence (Brandao et al ., ; Durakli Velioglu et al ., ), flow injection mass spectroscopy (FIMS) (Du et al ., ), capillary electrophoresis (CE) (Trimboli et al ., ), laser‐induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIB) (Moncayo et al ., ), sensors (Sakti et al ., ; Gupta et al ., ), time‐domain nuclear magnetic resonance (TD‐NMR) (Santos et al ., ), enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (Pizzano & Salimei, ), polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (Lee et al ., ; Pesic et al ., ), polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (Cheng et al ., ), high‐performance liquid chromatography‐based methods (Chen et al ., ; Ke et al ., ), electronic tongue (Dias et al ., ), FT‐NIRS (Mabood et al ., ,b), FT‐MIR (Nicolaou et al ., ; Jawaid et al ., ; Santos et al ., 2013a; Vieira et al ., ; Coitinho et al ., ) and infrared microspectroscopy (Santos et al ., 2013b). From all these available methods, infrared spectroscopy stands out more due to their test speed since a rapid answer is usually required as in the case of dairy industry (Cattaneo & Holroyd, ).…”

“…Adulteration of food products is an economically motivated serious global issue and commonly done by the addition of inferior quality material, replacement of substances or removable of some valuable ingredient(s) (Cattaneo & Holroyd, 2013;Poonia et al, 2017). Among numerous food products known to be adulterated, milk and its products make up a large portion (Poonia et al, 2017) and frequently adulterated with many common adulterants as detailed in review papers written by Cattaneo & Holroyd (2013) and Poonia et al (2017). Being great sources of nutrition worldwide, milk and milk products have crucial economic reputation (Cattaneo & Holroyd, 2013).…”

“…Among numerous food products known to be adulterated, milk and its products make up a large portion (Poonia et al, 2017) and frequently adulterated with many common adulterants as detailed in review papers written by Cattaneo & Holroyd (2013) and Poonia et al (2017). Being great sources of nutrition worldwide, milk and milk products have crucial economic reputation (Cattaneo & Holroyd, 2013). Adulteration of milk does not only lower the quality of milk and dairy products but also jeopardises consumers' well-being.…”