Use of sensors in cheese manufacture and quality control

Abstract

This work intends to give a brief overview of sensors application for cheese. Besides discussing the main achievements on the field, it will show the main difficulties that still need to be overcome. Single sensors to follow milk coagulation and detection of specific target compounds are discussed, as well as how complex problems where more than one compound need to be followed, as during rancidity development, can be adequately followed by a single non-specific sensor. Electronic noses formed by a variety of non-specific sensors can be employed in the quality control and examples of well succeeded applications as well as others still under development are discussed.