Verification of cheeses authenticity by mass spectrometry

Abstract

Cheeses are a group of fermented dairy products that are produced all over the world in various forms and flavours. Milk, especially sheep or goat milk, is still regarded as an expensive raw material in the world, which makes milk and milk products highly attractive as a fraud target. Most often, such fraud includes partial or complete substitution with cheaper sorts of milk (e.g. bovine milk). The aim of this work was to verify the authenticity of 27 cheeses commonly emerging on the Czech food market. The cheeses were distinguished on the basis of milk animal species origin. For this purpose, two mass spectrometry techniques were used: matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization with time of flight mass spectrometry together with principal component analysis method and liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization and quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The results were a partial success, because the cheeses could only be partially distinguished with the first mass spectrometry technique probably because of the influence of some protein additive materials in cheeses. The second technique allowed for collecting higher quality results and thus appears to be highly suitable for the research task.

Keywords: casein; cheese; mass spectrometry; milk.