Identification of cow milk in goat milk by nonlinear chemical fingerprint technique

•A nonlinear chemical fingerprint method was developed for milk adulteration determined.•Calibration model was established using the least square method.•The content of cow milk in goat milk was calculated by the calibration model.•The method developed has the advantages of low operational cost and no pretreatment.

The objective of this paper was to develop a nonlinear chemical fingerprint technique for identifying and detecting adulteration of goat milk with cow milk. In this study, by taking the Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillatory chemical reaction using acetone and substrates in goat milk or cow milk as main dissipative substances, when the same dosage of goat milk and cow milk was introduced to the “H+ + Mn2+ + BrO3− + acetone” oscillating system respectively, nonlinear chemical fingerprints were obtained for goat milk and cow milk from the same origin. The results showed that inductive time value and the content of cow milk in goat milk had a linear relationship in the range of 0-100% and the corresponding regression coefficient was 0.9991. A detection limit of 0.0107 g/g was obtained, and the content of cow milk in mixed milk was calculated. The proposed method in this study was simple, economical and effective. In addition, the method did not need the pretreatment and separation of samples for identifying and evaluating cow milk adulteration in goat milk.

Graphical abstractNonlinear chemical fingerprint of goat milk (1) and cow milk (2).Download high-res image (102KB)Download full-size image