Innovative method for early detection of bovine mastitis through dielectric spectral analysis

The present work is aimed to study the effect of somatic cell counts (SCC) on the dielectric properties viz.dielectric constant (' ) and dielectric loss factor ('' ) that could be correlated with the detection of mastitis in dairy cattle.A total of 100 samples were analyzed and found to have a mean SCC (10 3 ) SD of 10697, 384264 and 957858 for healthy, subclinical and clinical mastitis samples collected from Hardhenu cows.The values of ' and '' of raw milk were measured over the frequency range from 4 to 2954 MHz at the ambient temperature (25C) using a vector networkanalyzer and an open-ended coaxial-line probe.The results showed that the ' increased up to the frequency range of 4 to 804 MHz, beyond which the values decreased with increasing frequency in milk samples of healthy and mastitis animals.However, '' decreased linearly with increasing frequency range of 4 to 2954 MHz.The value of ' was significantly lower (p<0.05)as compared to subclinical and clinical mastitis milk samples.However, '' increased significantly (p<0.05) with increased SCC in milk samples.The present work concludes that the ' and '' could be a promising technique for quick identification of the presence of mastitis in the dairy cattle and provide information for developing the mastitis detector that being suitable for routine laboratory analysis or real-time quality monitoring based on dielectric properties of raw milk.