Screening of grated cheese authenticity by NIR spectroscopy

Parmigiano–Reggiano (PR) cheese is one of the oldest traditional cheeses produced in Europe, and it is still one of the most valuable Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cheeses of Italy. The denomination of origin is extended to the grated cheese when manufactured exclusively from whole Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese wheels that respond to the production standard. The grated cheese must be matured for a period of at least 12 months and characterized by a rind content not over 18%. In this investigation the potential of near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), coupled to different statistical methods, were used to estimate the authenticity of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese PDO. Cheese samples were classified as: compliance PR, competitors, non-compliance PR (defected PR), and PR with rind content greater then 18%. NIR spectra were obtained using a spectrophotometer Vector 22/N (Bruker Optics, Milan, Italy) in the diffuse reflectance mode. Instrument was equipped with a rotating integrating sphere. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted for an explorative spectra analysis, while the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were used to classify spectra, according to different cheese categories. Subsequently the rind percentage and month of ripening were estimated by a Partial Least Squares regression (PLS). Score plots of the PCA show a clear separation between compliance PR samples and the rest of the sample was observed. Competitors samples and the defected PR samples were grouped together. The classification performance for all sample classes, obtained by ANN analysis, was higher of 90%, in test set validation. Rind content and month of ripening were predicted by PLS a with a determination coefficient greater then 0.95 (test set). These results showed that the method can be suitable for a fast screening of grated cheese authenticity.