Comparison of FT-NIR spectroscopy and ELISA for detection of adulteration of goat cheeses with cow's milk

Abstract

This study investigated the ability of two methods to detect adulteration of goat cheeses via the addition of cow's milk, with a negligible effect on the raw materials. Cheeses were produced from a mixture of goat's and cow's milk and were then analyzed by Fourier transform near-IR (FT-NIR) spectroscopy and competitive ELISA. The cheese spectra were scanned in the spectroscope in reflectance mode on an integrating sphere at 80 scans and a resolution of 4 cm(-1). The spectra were evaluated via discriminant analysis, and a calibration was created via a partial least-squares algorithm to quantify the cow's milk admixture. A correlation coefficient of R = 0.999 was reached with a standard error of calibration of 0.0407. The results were statistically processed to a median value via a f-test. Adulteration detection by the ELISA method was performed using a commercial Milk Fraud/Bovine ELISA kit. It was found that the FT-NIR spectroscopy method is capable of detecting an admixture of cow's milk in goat cheese as small as 1%. The ELISA method did not return satisfactory results for the detection of adulteration with cow's milk.