An attempt to identify milk protein fraction genotypes using unsupervised and supervised near-infrared spectroscopy methods

Abstract

The aim was to evaluate near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) potential to discriminate among β-casein (CN), κ-CN and β-lactoglobulin (LG) genotypes to be used as an authentication method. A total of 168 milk samples with known genetic information for β-CN, κ-CN and β-LG were collected at the same farm and paired with the NIRS spectrum. Spectra were evaluated with an unsupervised method (principal component analysis, PCA) and a supervised method (partial least squares-discriminant analysis, PLS-DA). For the PLS-DA, data were split into a train (75%) and a test set (25%), and the variable in projection >1 criterion was applied to select informative wavelengths. Results obtained confirmed that milk quality was similar among genetic variants. For the PCA, the observed variance explained by the first two principal components was 94%, but samples were not clustered by their genotypes of β-CN (i.e. A1A2, A2A2), κ-CN (i.e. AA, AB, AE, BB, BE) and β-LG (i.e. AA, AB, BB). The best accuracy for the PLS-DA models was reached by β-CN (train and test set, 64%), followed by β-LG (train set, 56%; test set, 52%) and κ-CN (train set, 41%; test set, 36%). In conclusion, the PCA on milk spectra was not able to cluster β-CN, κ-CN and β-LG genotypes, but the PLS-DA models revealed promising results for β-CN and β-LG. It could be interesting to increase the number of samples to equilibrate genetic variants and to apply a sampling selection method before discarding the applicability of NIRS as an authentication method.

Highlights

• Near-infrared spectroscopy discriminates β-casein (CN) and β-lactoglobulin (LG) more accurately than κ-CN genotypes.

• Scarce cluster ability of β-CN, κ-CN and β-LG genotypes with principal component analysis (PCA).

• Partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) moderately discriminates β-CN and β-LG genotypes.

• PLS-DA lowly discriminates κ-CN genotypes.

Keywords:

• A2 milk
• genetic polymorphism
• NIRS
• protein variants

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Interprofessional Dairy Association of Catalonia (ALLIC) (Barcelona, Spain) for providing the samples.

Ethics statement

Procedures adopted in the present study do not fall into the scope of an animal ethics evaluation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data presented in this study are available free of charge for any user upon reasonable request from the corresponding authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain with the Project PID2019-110752RB.I00. C.L. Manuelian is currently a postdoctoral researcher funded with a María Zambrano Grant from the Spanish Ministry of Universities (funded by European Union-Next Generation EU; MZ2021-86).