Innovative Techniques to Assess Adulteration in Ghee

Abstract

Adulteration in dairy products not only endangers human life but also costs money. Ghee, the most valuable fat, commands a premium price than other fats and oils. Unethical vendors exploit this by combining ghee with cheap fats or oils. Adulteration of ghee could be estimated using time-consuming physical-chemical constants such as Butyrorefractometer readings, Reichert-Meissl values, Polenske values, Iodine values and saponification values. As a result, researchers are now employing novel techniques. To determine the presence of coconut oil in ghee, attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and chemometrics are used. An olfactory machine system equipped with an electronic nose (E-nose) tool is employed as a quick method for detecting adulteration in cow ghee with soybean oil. A quick and easy approach based on \(\beta\)-sitosterol employing Reversed-Phase thin layer chromatography (RP-TLC) is designed to test the purity of milk fat. This protocol analyses adulteration in cow ghee with vanaspati using an image analysis technique termed particle analysis and colour measurement.  The DPPH (2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) chromogenic assay has been used to detect the presence of palm oil in ghee.