The milk powders including nonfat dry milk (NFDM) and skim milk powders (SMP) are commonly used in reconstitution of milk/dairy products and are widely used in food industry for nutritional purposes  and also for their intrinsic advantageous functional properties. The Milk powder is one of the most widely traded food commodities and its adulteration for economical gains is a big motivation to fraudsters.  There is an urgent need of robust and rapid methods which can authenticate milk powder samples and help in detection of their adulteration. <br/>A study was undertaken to determine amino acid composition of SMP and NFDM samples and effect of their spiking with some potential adulterants. The distribution of each amino acid analyzed in all SMP and NFDM samples was found to be within the corresponding limits of their distribution in authentic SMP and NFDM samples proposed in the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC) standard and thus verified their authenticity. Some of the common plant and animal proteins and potential economically motivated adulterants were found to be different in distribution of some of the amino acids compared to NFDM and SMP samples. <br/>Spiking of the NFDM/SMP with potential adulterants was found to affect its amino acid fingerprint at certain spiking levels with some of the adulterants based on data collected on 38 authentic NFDM/SMPs and with potential adulterants in a mini-collaborative study between five laboratories. One-way analysis of variance  (AONOVA) with Dunett’s post-hoc test indicated that distribution of glycine in milk powders was more sensitive and affected by spiking with most of the studied vegetable proteins and also by gelatin at least at one of the  applied spiking levels. Similarly spiking with whey protein isolate also affected NFDM/SMP amino acid fingerprint. This study  demonstrates  utility of amino acid fingerprinting in verifying authenticity of milk powders samples and use as one of the parameters in detection of adulteration of NFDM/SMP samples.

Use of amino acid fingerprinting in authenticity verification of nonfat dry milk and skim milk powders

ACS Spring 2022

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