Feasibility study of discriminating the manufacturing process and sampling zone in ripened soft cheeses using attenuated total reflectance MIR and fiber optic diffuse reflectance VIS–NIR spectroscopy

The use of visible–near infrared (VIS–NIR) and mid infrared (MIR) spectroscopies for rapid characterisation of 15 traditional and stabilised retail soft cheeses, manufactured with different cheese making procedures was described. A fiber-type, VIS–NIR spectrophotometer (Zeiss Corona 45 VIS–NIR) in a measurement range of 315–1700 nm and a Fourier transform spectrometer (IFS 66V/S, Bruker, Belgium) in a measurement range between 3000 and 900 cm−1 were used to scan spectra in reflectance mode at the external (E) and central (C) zones of the investigated cheeses. The principal component analysis (PCA) applied to the normalised spectral data set (VIS–NIR and MIR) did not provide a good discrimination of cheeses. Therefore, the factorial discriminant analysis (FDA) was applied separately to the first 5 principal components (PCs) of the PCA performed on the VIS–NIR and MIR data sets. Regarding the MIR spectra, the percentage of samples correctly classified into six groups (three for the E and three for the C zones) by the FDA was 64.8% and 33.3% for the calibration and validation samples, respectively. Better classification was obtained from the VIS–NIR spectra since the percentage of samples correctly classified was 85.2% and 63.2% for the calibration and validation samples, respectively. Finally, a concatenation technique was applied on the first 5 PCs of the PCA performed on the VIS–NIR and MIR data sets. This technique allowed a quite satisfactory classification of the investigated cheeses according to their manufacturing process and their sampling zone. In this case, correct classifications (CC) of 90.7% and 80.6% were obtained for the calibration and the validation samples, respectively.