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The addition of cow's milk, fat or whey to ewe or buffalo ricotta is a common form of fraud in the dairy industry because of its economic convenience. β-carotene may serve as an excellent indicator of the presence of cow's milk in ewe or buffalo ricotta because it has been noted that bcarotene is naturally present in cow's milk alone. therefore, a simple and sensitive isocratic reversed- phase HPLc method has been developed for the determination of β-carotene in ricotta. this method involves fat saponification followed by extraction with a mixture of organic solvents. A linear correlation between the concentration of β-carotene and the area response has been obtained over the concentration range of 0.045 to 0.900 µg/mL, which corresponds to about 1 to 22 µg/100 g in ricotta. the detection limit was 0.7 ng of injected sample, and the recovery evaluated in spiked ricotta samples was always higher than 90% [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]