Analytical methods to detect the Adulterants in Milk - An Overview

Milk contains whole nutrients and is consumed by the majority of population in the form of drinking as well as dietary products. Milk adulteration is one of the most common phenomena, this milk adulteration can be over looked in many countries. it shows serious health hazards leading to fatal diseases. Milk adulterants have been reported globally by adding various instances such as adding water, whey proteins, melamine, urea, detergents, starch hydrogen peroxide, boric acid. This paper presents a detailed review of common milk adulterants as well as different methods such as the chromatographic methods such as HPLC and GC coupled with mass spectrometry to detect the adulterants in milk, and immunological techniques such as ELISA and various DNA based procedures like PCR have also been used to detect the adulterants both qualitatively and quantitatively. This study is organized to be an adulterants-based study instead of a techniques-based one, where qualitative detection for most of the common adulterants are enlisted and quantitative detection methods are limited to a few major adulterants of milk. Apart from regular techniques, recent development in these detection techniques has also been reported. Nowadays milk is being adulterated in more sophisticated ways that demand for cutting- edge research for the detection of adulterants. This review intends to contribute towards the common knowledge base regarding possible milk adulterants and their detection techniques.