Prediction of the curing time of Spanish hams using peptide profiles established by capillary zone electrophoresis

A capillary zone electrophoresis procedure for the prediction of curing time of Spanish hams using peptide profiles has been developed. Excellent resolution between the seven peptide peaks was achieved within 30 min analysis time with a BGE containing 60 mM MgSO4 and 50 mM phosphate at pH 2.5. Using hams with curing times of 6, 8 and 12 months, both linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and multiple linear regression (MLR) models were constructed. In both cases, two different normalisation procedures of the peak areas were compared. Using LDA, all the ham samples corresponding to the three categories were correctly classified. Using MLR, the ham curing time could be predicted with average prediction errors below 2.5%.