Non-destructive methods of milk quality assessment

Abstract

Monitoring the quality of raw cow milk is essential to maintain food safety and human health. To guarantee the quality and safety of milk, easy-to-use non-destructive analysis methods are available. Non-destructive methods have made progress, being useful for obtaining quantitative and qualitative data, destroying the sample, and offering several advantages, such as high sensitivity, adequate response time, and minimal sample preparation. Conventional methods are laborious, destructive, toxic, and time-consuming, require fully equipped laboratories and skilled personnel, extensive sample preparation, and are not suitable for real-time continuous monitoring of milk quality. The rapid development of non-destructive methods for the evaluation of milk quality consists of applications based on imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, conductivity, biosensors, and ultrasound. This paper presents different non-destructive methods applied to determine the physicochemical parameters of raw milk (fats, proteins, lactose, casein, dry matter, acidity, density), the number of somatic cells, and the microbiological load.