Measurement of water-holding capacity in fermented milk using near-infrared spectroscopy combined with chemometric methods.

We investigated the use of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) for measuring water-holding capacity (WHC) in fermented milk. Increased WHC ensures improved texture and decreased syneresis in fermented dairy products and also improves cheese yield. NIR combined with partial least-squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was found to be a promising rapid and non-invasive method with no pretreatment of the samples for prediction of WHC in fermented milk samples.