The Role and the Place of High-Performance Liquid Chromatography for the Determination of Fermented Dairy Products

Abstract

Abstract Milk has been used to produce fermented milk products all over the world since 10,000 BC. The fermentation process extends the shelf life of milk-based products. Transforming milk to different fermented foods (kefir, yogurt, etc.) involves adding lactic-acid-producing microorganisms, which ingest lactose and release waste organic acids. Organic acid refers to organic compounds that give a characteristic quality to foods as a result of hydrolysis and microbial activity of proteins and carbohydrates that have been widely used as food additives to prevent deterioration and extend shelf life. Determination of carbohydrates and organic acids in dairy fermented products is important, since they affect the characteristics of food. It is also important to determine bacterial activity, as well as the growth of the colonies. An early investigation of fermented products based on titration methods that are not selective. Otherwise these methods are not sufficient to detect low concentration of acids. To avoid these difficulties, separation techniques, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and gas chromatography (GC), electrodriven techniques like capillary electrophoresis (CE), and so forth, were chosen due to accurate, selective, and sensitive analysis. In this chapter, the place and the importance of separation techniques, especially HPLC for the determination of dairy products, are explained briefly and the published papers on analysis conditions, the sample preparation, and the parameters for validation are summarized.