Development of an ATR-FTIR based method for detection of milk adulteration

Milk adulteration is a very common practice in the field of dairy production in certain countries, where different methods are used to adulterate milk. Such methods vary in their sophistication from simply adding water to using different chemicals such as urea and melamine, which usually countervail the effects of adding water on indices used to measure certain characteristics (e.g., lowering freezing point, or mimicking protein content) of milk like freezing point value and protein content to detect the addition of water. These additions have negative effects on both consumer health and the dairy industry, which makes the development of a reliable rapid detecting method of such adulterants a crucial need. Recent reports in the literature have demonstrated the potential of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy as a means of differentiating between raw milk and adulterated milk samples. The infrared spectrum of an adulterated milk sample showed distinct features that are not present in raw milk.

Faculty Supervisor:

Ashraf Ismail

Student:

Mazen Bahadi

Partner:

Discipline:

Food science

Sector:

University:

McGill University

Program:

Accelerate International