Rapid Detection of Milk Constituents

• Nutritional constituents of milk are generally measured using different physical and chemical
methods in laboratories.
• Fat contents are usually measured using the Gerber Method while proteins are measured using the
Kjeldahl method.
• Lactose in dairy products is measured using enzymatic methods since they are relatively
inexpensive.
• All these traditional methods are time and labor consuming, need professional expertise and have
an off-line nature.
• Therefore, these methods can not meet the requirement for a large number of and frequent milk
nutrient analysis in a modern dairy farm.
Rapid Detection of • A number of rapid detection techniques developed during the last
decade have shown promising results.

Milk Constituents • These techniques include chromatography, spectroscopy, dielectric

properties and sensors.
• Chromatography has been widely used to measure trace contents due
to its high separation efficiency.
• Spectroscopy techniques, including Raman, mid-infrared (MIR), near-
infrared (NIR), and visible and near-infrared (Vis-NIR) spectroscopy have
been widely developed or used in the detection of milk nutrient.
• The dielectric properties of milk have been noted for that they have
good relationships
with milk compositions, and these relationships have great potential in
milk quality evaluation.
• Various sensors have been broadly developed to detect the main
nutrients of milk since they could offer reliable results in a short time
and are convenient in measurement.
Detection of Fat • Due to many individual triacylglycerides(TAGs) in milk,
analyzing the TAGs is a challenge.
using • Beccaria et al. (2014) used ultra-high performance
chromatography and mass spectrometry(MS) to
Chromatography characterize the TAGs in goat and cow milk. In the
investigated cow and goat samples, 141 and 165 different
TAGs were positively identified.
• Owing to the complexity of fatty acids, highly efficient
separation methods are needed.
• Up to now, gas chromatography has been widely applied
in the analysis of fatty acids.
Detection of Fat • The potential of Raman spectroscopy combined with partial
least square (PLS) as a rapid method for the direct
using Spectroscopy determination of milk fat was demonstrated by El-Abassy et
al. (2011).
• In this study, spectral data were obtained for homogenized
milk samples with 0.3–3.8% fat content.
• Twelve different milk mixtures with fat content ranging from
0.30 to 1.55% were measured using Raman spectroscopy.
The results demonstrated that even the fat content was
under 0.3%, the established PLS model was able to quantify
the fat in low-fat milk with very good accuracy.
• In NIR spectra, the complex multimodal size distribution of
scattering particles makes it complicated to analyze milk
compositions.
 Detection of Fat using Spectroscopy
• A NIR spectroscopic measurement system was developed by Kawasaki et al. (2008) for
the determination of milk fat content, and the NIR spectra of milk were obtained in the
range of 600–1050 nm without homogenization during milking.
• The table shows the different spectroscopic techniques used, the spectral range and
their standard errors.
 Detection of Fat using Dielectric Properties
• Fat globules are covered by a thin nonconductive membrane. They occupy the volume
of the conducting medium and impede the movement of conducting ions at radio
frequencies below about 300 MHz.
• Thus milk conductance decreases with an increase in fat content.
• Zywica, Banach, and Kiełczewska (2012) studied the correlations between the fat
content and the conductance and capacitance of milk in frequency range of 100 Hz–
100 kHz and pointed out that the fat content of raw milk had high correlation with the
value of parallel equivalent capacitance.
 • The feasibility of determining fat
content in milk by using an optical
fiber sensor was investigated by
Zhu, Zhao, et al. (2016).
• The predicted was close to 1 and
Detection of Fat the relative standard error of
prediction was 0.265%, meaning
using Sensors that fat content and light
absorbance were significantly
correlated.
• The study indicated that effective
fat content measurement in real-
time could be realized by using
optical fiber sensor.
 • Mazurek et al. (2015) measured the
protein content in commercial cow milk
with Raman spectroscopy. Twenty-one
commercial milk samples were used to
validate the prediction models.
• The relative standard errors of the
prediction set were in the range of 5.6–

Detection of Protein 6.1% for protein content.

• Huang et al. (2016) applied Raman

using Spectroscopy scattering spectroscopy to measure the

total protein in milk and verified the
accuracy of this method using a real milk
sample.
• The total protein concentration in milk
obtained by Raman scattering
spectroscopy (30.1 g ) was similar to that
obtained using the Lowry method (29.8
g ) and Kjeldahl analysis(30.7 g ).
 Detection of Protein using Spectroscopy
• MIR spectroscopy has also been regarded as a potential tool to determine the detailed
protein compositions of milk samples.
• Bonfatti, Martino, and Carnier (2011) used the MIR spectroscopy to determine the
detailed protein compositions by using 1517 milk samples of Simmental cows. The
between the predicted proteins and the measured ones in cross-validation set were in
the range of 0.08–0.78.
• This indicates that MIR is not suited to determine individual milk proteins suitably.
 • To study the relationships between
protein content and dielectric
properties of milk, Zhu, Guo, Jia, et al.
(2015) applied raw cow milk as
samples and measured their dielectric

Detection of Protein properties at different protein content

levels from 3.21 to 7.12%.

using Dielectric • The results indicated that with the

increased protein content, the
dielectric constant increased linearly at
Properties a given frequency below about 150
MHz and decreased linearly above 600
MHz.
• Moreover, the dielectric loss factor
increased linearly at a given frequency
between 10 and 4500 MHz.
 • Colorimetry, a visual analysis
method has been used in protein
determination. This is due to its low
cost, high sensitivity, and ease of
use.
• Vantasin et al. (2013) developed a
Detection of Protein colorimetric analysis method to
determine the protein content in
using Sensors milk according to the color change
of starch-stabilized gold
nanoparticles.
• Under the optimized condition, the
developed assay could accurately
determine protein content over the
range of 293–2.93 mg .
 • This review focuses on the rapid
detection techniques, that is,
chromatography, spectroscopy,
dielectric properties and sensors, and
main nutritional constituents, that is,
fats and proteins.
• There is much room for the

Conclusions development of accurate detection

technology which is suitable for rapid
detection of main nutritional
constituents in milk.
• There is also an urgent need for further
researches to make commercial grade
equipment that could be used
in-line/on-line detection on nutritional
constituents of milk.