Breakthrough innovations in industrial cheesemaking processes

Abstract

Cheese, which has played a crucial role in mankind history, is now produced using optimized and automated processes. However, these productions still have significant potential for improvement in terms of the technological, economic, and environmental performance and of the product quality. Controlling milk composition and curd cutting time pave the route for optimizing cheesemaking performances and cheese characteristics, while ripening time can be reduced by uncoupling cheese texture and aroma construction or properly selecting cheese ripening strains and enzymes. Omics techniques now make it possible to screen starters both having technological and functional or probiotic properties or preventing fungal or bacteria spoilage. Similarly, the mining of the whole processing data set using artificial intelligence, expert knowledge, and multi-objective optimization has enormous potential for identifying the best possible cheesemaking route. By taking environmental performance into account, the latter can identify solutions that reduce consumptions of water, energy, and cleaning agents.