The Use of NIR Spectroscopy and Chemometrics to Identify the Thermal Treatment of Milk in Fiore Sardo PDO Cheese to Detect Fraud

The production of Fiore Sardo cheese is regulated by the specification of the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), which aims to guarantee the specific area of production, the know-how of local producers, and the specific use of raw milk from Sarda sheep. The thermization of milk is a sub-pasteurization process that is commonly used in cheese-making to lower the bacterial load and increase the shelf life of the product; it is therefore a cause of non-compliance with the PDO specification of Fiore Sardo cheese, allowing producers to gain practical and economic advantages. In this work, NIR spectroscopy coupled with multivariate discriminant analysis was used to identify the thermal treatment of milk in Fiore Sardo cheese samples. Cheeses were produced using raw milk (38 °C), low-thermized milk (57 °C for 30 s), and high-thermized milk (68 °C for 30 s). The NIR spectra of the cheeses were used to build discriminant models for individuating the thermal treatment of the processed milk. The obtained discriminant models were able to correctly classify about 90% of the Fiore Sardo cheese samples. This method could be suitable as a screening technique to authenticate Fiore Sardo PDO cheese.