Discrimination of Cheese Products Regarding Milk Species' Origin Using FTIR, ¹H-NMR, and Chemometrics

The present study deals with the discrimination of various European cheese products based on spectroscopic data and chemometric analysis. It is the first study that includes cheese products from Cyprus along with cheese samples from abroad and several different cheese types. Therefore, forty-nine samples were collected, freeze-dried, and measured by using spectroscopic techniques, such as FTIR (Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) and H-1-NMR (proton nuclear magnetic resonance). Discriminant analysis was applied, particularly OPLS-DA. All data obtained from H-1-NMR were included, whereas, regarding the FTIR data, only the spectral subregion between 1900 and 400 cm(-1) was used in the extracted model. The cheese samples were classified according to the milk species' origin. In the future, the samples of this study will be enriched for further testing with spectroscopic techniques and chemometrics.