Abstract
Milk is a product that requires quality control at all stages of production: from the dairy farm, processing at the dairy plant to finished products. Milk is a complex multiphase polydisperse system, whose components not only determine the quality and price of raw milk, but also reflect the physiological state of the herd. Today’s production volumes and rates require simple, fast, cost-effective, and accurate analytical methods, and most manufacturers want to move away from methods that use reagents that increase analysis time and move to rapid analysis methods. The review presents methods for the rapid determination of the main components of milk, examines their advantages and disadvantages. Optical spectroscopy is a fast, non-destructive, precise, and reliable tool for determination of the main constituents and common adulterants in milk. While mid-infrared spectroscopy is a well-established off-line laboratory technique for the routine quality control of milk, near-infrared technologies provide relatively low-cost and robust solutions suitable for on-site and in-line applications on milking farms and dairy production facilities. Other techniques, discussed in this review, including Raman spectroscopy, atomic spectroscopy, molecular fluorescence spectroscopy, are also used for milk analysis but much less extensively. Acoustic methods are also suitable for non-destructive on-line analysis of milk. Acoustic characterization can provide information on fat content, particle size distribution of fat and proteins, changes in the biophysical properties of milk over time, the content of specific proteins and pollutants. The basic principles of ultrasonic techniques, including transmission, pulse-echo, interferometer, and microbalance approaches, are briefly described and milk parameters measured with their help, including frequency ranges and measurement accuracy, are given.
Highlights
Milk is one of the most common foods
UDVe-sVpisitieblesiSmpeiclatrroitsycopiny the background physical principles, analytical approaches, methods, and equipment for the spectral analysis of milk strongly differ in different spectral regions (UV, visible, NIR,IMn ItRh)eaUndV sahnodultdhebeshdoisrctu-wssaevdelseenpgatrhatpelayr.t of the visible region characteristic electronic absorption of the whey proteins, fats, and some vitamins could be detected in diluted milk samples, while water is virtually transparent up to 900 nm
This region is not often used for milk spectrophotometric analysis because of very intensive light scattering on the casein micelles and the necessity of sample dilution and pretreatment; the rare examples include the methods for determination of casein [54] and fat [56]
Summary
Milk is one of the most common foods. Dairy products are important dietary sources of calcium because of its high content, high absorption rate, availability, and relatively low cost. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy provides relatively low-cost and robust solutions suitable for in-line applications on milking farms and dairy production facilities, including devices incorporated in milking robots and industrial processing equipment. An important problem in the world remains the lack of raw milk and the deficit in both total volume and quality The reasons for this situation are multifaceted—there is a decrease in the total livestock population, production of low-quality products, insufficient breeding work, outdated methods of keeping and feeding animals, outdated and worn out equipment, a shortage of personnel (both highly qualified and working personnel), unpopularity of the profession, low prices for raw milk, low investment attractiveness (the dairy industry is traditionally an industry with a low payback level), long payback periods. Dairies cannot produce a quality product from such raw materials, and farms suffer significant losses Another important question is the composition of milk. This will allow adjusting the ration of the dairy herd and culling the livestock in time
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