Online Milk Quality Assessment during Milking Using Near-infrared Spectroscopic Sensing System

Abstract

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a nondestructive technique used for obtaining qualitative and quantitative information pertaining to foods and agricultural commodities. NIRS has been used for the evaluation of physicochemical properties of rice and wheat (Kawamura et al., 2002; Natsuga et al., 2006), and it has already been practically used for the automatic inspection system of ricequality (Kawamura et al., 2003). NIRS has also been used to determine milk quality (Sato et al., 1987; Tsenkova et al., 2001; Kawamura et al., 2007; Kawasaki et al., 2008; Iweka et al., 2016; 2017). However, in recent times, there has been a strong need for a novel system that can be used by dairy farmers to assess the milk quality of individual cow during milking. This need has not been met because it has been challenging to use NIRS for online real-time milk quality assessment of individual cows during milking. For this reason, we designed an experimental online near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopic sensing system for milk quality assessment during milking, and we validated the precision and accuracy of the calibration models developed by the sensing system for monitoring milk quality. MATERIALS AND METHODS