African Journal of
Agricultural Research

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Agric. Res.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1991-637X
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJAR
  • Start Year: 2006
  • Published Articles: 6860

Full Length Research Paper

Detection and quantification of cow milk adulteration using portable near-infrared spectroscopy combined with chemometrics

Mohammed Abdallah Musa
  • Mohammed Abdallah Musa
  • State Key Laboratory of Agro-Product Quality and Safety, Institute of Quality Standards and Testing Technology for Agro-products, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, P. R. China.
  • Google Scholar
Shuming Yang
  • Shuming Yang
  • Department of Dairy Production, Faculty of Animal Production, University of Sinnar, Abu Naama, Sinnar State, Sudan.
  • Google Scholar


  •  Received: 08 November 2020
  •  Accepted: 04 December 2020
  •  Published: 28 February 2021

Abstract

Milk adulteration is a common phenomenon in many countries, which draws extensive attention from humans due to health hazards that might result in some fatal diseases. In this study, a portable near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer combined with multivariate analysis was used to detect and quantify milk adulteration. Fresh cow milk samples were collected from eight dairy farms in Beijing and Hebei province of China. Water, urea, starch and goat milk were used to adulterate milk at 11 different concentrations. The data driven soft independent modeling of class analogy (DD-SIMCA) method was employed for qualitative analysis. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) was applied for statistical analysis of the obtained NIR spectral data. The results showed that the DD-SIMCA approach achieved satisfactory classification. By the PLSR model, standard error of prediction (SEP) values of 4.35, 0.34, 4.74 and 5.56 g/L were obtained for water, urea, starch and goat milk, respectively. These results demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of NIR spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis in the prediction of the total contents of the investigated adulterants in cow milk.

Key words: Portable near-infrared (NIR)-spectroscopy, milk adulteration, DD-SIMCA, Partial least squares (PLS) regression.

Abbreviation

NIR, Near-infrared spectroscopy; PCA, principal component analysis; DD-SIMCA, data driven soft independent modeling of class analogy; PLSR, partial least squares regression; RMSE, root mean square error; RMSECV, root mean square error of cross validation; RMSEP, root mean square error of prediction.