Spotting Frozen Curd in PDO Buffalo Mozzarella Cheese Through Insights on Its Supramolecular Structure Acquired by 1H TD-NMR Relaxation Experiments

The addition of frozen curd (FC) during the production process “Mozzarella di Bufala Campana”, an Italian cheese with Protected Designation Origin (PDO), is a common fraud not involving modifications chemical composition in final product. Its detection cannot thus be easily obtained by analytical methods, which are targeted at changes concentrations diagnostic species. In this work, possibility spotting focusing on supramolecular structure food matrix, detected time domain nuclear magnetic resonance (TD-NMR) experiments, was investigated. Cheese samples were manufactured triplicate, according to PDO disciplinary production, except for using variable amounts FC (i.e., 0, 15, 30, and 50% w/w). Relaxation data analysed through different approaches: (i) Discrete multi-exponential fitting, (ii) continuous Laplace inverse (iii) chemometrics approach. strategy that lead best results analysis raw Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) decays, allowing discriminate between compliant adulterated samples, as low 15% addition. based use machine learning projection latent structures CPMG classification tasks detection, quadratic discriminant analysis. By coupling TD-NMR decays learning, work opens way set up system detecting frauds modifying matrix structure, no official authentication methods yet available.