Milk adulterant detection: Conventional and biosensor based approaches: A review

Milk adulteration is one of the major global concerns as milk is being consumed as a wholesome dairy product in every part of the world. The fraudulent practice of milk adulteration is on the rise, which is making people apprehensive about the purity and quality of milk. The adulterants such as water, vegetable and animal fat, extraneous proteins and chemical components viz. melamine, urea, formalin, detergents, ammonium sulphate, boric acid, caustic soda, benzoic acid, salicylic acid, hydrogen peroxide and sugars deliberately mixed in milk can be an be harmful to the health of consumers. This necessitates the availability of procedures and technologies that could curb this ill practice of milk adulteration. Over the years, various methods have been developed for the detection of milk adulterants. The chromatographic methods such as HPLC and GC, coupled with mass spectrometry have been used for selective identification as well as detection of different milk adulterants. Immunological techniques such as ELISA and various DNA based procedures like PCR have also been used for the specific detection of some common milk adulterants. Spectroscopic methods, namely FTIR and NIR in association with chemometrics have raised the bar of adulterant detection systems. The equipments such as electronic nose and electronic tongue are some of the fancy procedures used in milk and other food adulterants detection. The biosensors are the detection systems that can be used for rapid and real time detection of milk adulterants. This review brings insight into the biosensor application in milk adulterant detection and also tries to explore the potential of biosensors in identifying some common milk adulterants.