Shelf life determination by electronic nose: application to milk

Electronic Nose is mostly used for different applications in food and beverage industries: identification, quantification, quality control. In each application. the principal goal is that this instrument could discriminate different organoleptic properties of different samples. Those properties could be qualities, origins, defects, concentration of pollutants. One of the usefulness of this instrument is when it induces, on the analyzed products, the same structure as the one induced by a human sensory panel allowing instrumental measurement of sensory properties. In this case, mathematical methods are used to exploit this correlation in order to bring in line the sensory panel capabilities. Sensory panel knowledge and capabilities are transferred to the production shop floor for routine analysis. In this paper, one presents the results of Electronic Nose used to determine the shelf life of milk. To do this, milk was stored at ambient temperature and at constant temperature of 5 ° C. Samples of each of the stored milk have been analyzed by electronic nose at different times. The mathematical method presented here will suggest some interesting time-events, found in the literature on milk shelf life, that correspond to significant ones in the milk evolution or aging. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.