Evaluation of Taste Sensing System for Discriminating Milk Produced by Different Feeding Management of Cows and Heat Treatments

Abstract

　Feeding management of dairy cows significantly influence on milk composition. However, there was little information regarding the effect of feeding management of cows on the taste of milk. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether a taste sensing system was able to discriminate a difference of milk from different farms and under different heat treatments. Forty eight milk samples were prepared by combining raw milk samples from four farms (Farm A, B, C: grazing, Farm D: confinement management), four types of heat treatments including raw milk (raw, UHT, HTST-homogenized, and HTST-non homogenized), and three tests. Milk samples were analyzed using the taste sensing system equipped with 6 probes. The discriminant model could distinguish between milk samples obtained from each farm (R²=0.619 and Q²=0.488, % of correct classification=91.7%). The discriminant model for heat treatments classified heat treatments between HTST and UHT (R²=0.601 and Q²=0.252, % of correct classification=91.7%). However, the discriminant model did not classified between raw milk and HTST milk (R²=0.217 and Q²=0.103), and homogenization (R²=0.221 and Q²=0.058).