The Feasibility of Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Chemometrics for Untargeted Detection of Protein Adulteration in Yogurt: Removing Unwanted Variations in Pure Yogurt

Untargeted detection of protein adulteration in Chinese yogurt was performed using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and chemometrics class modelling techniques. sixty yogurt samples were prepared with pure and fresh milk from local market, and 197 adulterated yogurt samples were prepared by blending the pure yogurt objects with different levels of edible gelatin, industrial gelatin, and soy protein powder, which have been frequently used for yogurt adulteration. A recently proposed one-class partial least squares (OCPLS) model was used to model the NIR spectra of pure yogurt objects and analyze those of future objects. To improve the raw spectra, orthogonal projection (OP) of raw spectra onto the spectrum of pure water and standard normal variate (SNV) transformation were used to remove unwanted spectral variations. The best model was obtained with OP preprocessing with sensitivity of 0.900 and specificity of 0.949. Moreover, adulterations of yogurt with 1% (w/w) edible gelatin, 2% (w/w) industrial gelatin, and 2% (w/w) soy protein powder can be safely detected by the proposed method. This study demonstrates the potential of combining NIR spectroscopy and OCPLS as an untargeted detection tool for protein adulteration in yogurt.