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Adulteration of higher priced milks with cheaper ones to obtain extra profit can adversely affect consumer health and the market. In this study, pure buffalo milk (BM), goat milk (GM), camel milk (CM), and their mixtures with 5–50% (vol/vol) cow milk or water were used. Mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIRS) combined with modern statistical machine learning was used for the discrimination and quantification of cow milk or water adulteration in BM, GM, and CM. Compared to partial least squares (PLS), modern statistical machine learning—especially support vector machines (SVM), projection pursuit regression (PPR), and Bayesian regularized neural networks (BRNN)—exhibited superior performance for the detection of adulteration. The best prediction models for the different predictive traits are as follows: The binary classification models developed by SVM resulted in differentiation of CM-cow milk, and GM/CM-water mixtures. PLS resulted in differentiation of BM/GM-cow milk and BM-water mixtures. All of the above models have 100% classification accuracy. SVM was used to develop multi-classification models for identifying the high and low proportions of cow milk in BM, GM, and CM, as well as the high and low proportions of water adulteration in BM and GM, with correct classification rates of 94%, 100%, 100%, 99%, and 100%, respectively. In addition, a PLS-based model was developed for identifying the high and low proportions of water adulteration in CM, with correct classification rates of 100%. A regression model for quantifying cow milk in BM was developed using PCA + BRNN, with RMSEV = 5.42%, and RV2 = 0.88. A regression model for quantifying water adulteration in BM was developed using PCA + PPR, with RMSEV = 1.70%, and RV2 = 0.99. Modern statistical machine learning improved the accuracy of MIRS in predicting BM, GM, and CM adulteration more effectively than PLS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The days open was calculated as the difference between the dates of successful insemination and previous calving, which is a critical trait for the dairy industry. However, factors affecting days open were not well documented, and clarifying the mechanism of days open will contribute to the high-quality development of the dairy industry. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to evaluate the difference in days open between parity or calving season groups and assess associations of days open with wavenumbers ranging within the mid-infrared region. We found that the days open in calving season groups were significantly different, and dairy cows having a calving event in autumn showed the shortest number of days open. Weak associations were detected between days open and wavenumbers spanning the mid-infrared region. Based on the findings of the study, the reproduction management of dairy herds can be dynamically optimized according to the calving seasons, and the relationship between wavenumbers and days open needs to be further confirmed to service the dairy industry better. Milk spectral data on 2118 cows from nine herds located in northern China were used to access the association of days open (DO). Meanwhile, the parity and calving season of dairy cows were also studied to characterize the difference in DO between groups of these two cow-level factors. The result of the linear mixed-effects model revealed that no significant differences were observed between the parity groups. However, a significant difference in DO exists between calving season groups. The interaction between parity and calving season presented that primiparous cows always exhibit lower DO among all calving season groups, and the variation in DO among parity groups was especially clearer in winter. Survival analysis revealed that the difference in DO between calving season groups might be caused by the different P/AI at the first TAI. In addition, the summer group had a higher chance of conception in the subsequent services than other groups, implying that the micro-environment featured by season played a critical role in P/AI. A weak linkage between DO and wavenumbers ranging in the mid-infrared region was detected. In summary, our study revealed that the calving season of dairy cows can be used to optimize the reproduction management. The potential application of mid-infrared spectroscopy in dairy cows needs to be further developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The milk containing only A2 β-casein (called A2 milk) is globally popular because of its unique health benefits. Traditionally, genetic testing (such as gene sequencing) is used to identify the cows with A2 β-casein gene that can only produce A2 milk, which is a time-consuming and costly method. The objective of this study was to directly identify A1 and A2 milk from a large quantity of milk using mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy and chemometrics without genotyping cows. Before establishing the predictive model, we firstly genotyped the A1 β-casein and A2 β-casein of cows from blood as reference values. Further, the MIR spectra of the milk collected from these cows were obtained using a dairy product analyzer. The MIR spectroscopy data and the reference values were used as the independent and dependent variables, respectively, to establish a category classification model for A1 and A2 milk. Seven preprocessing methods were combined with two feature extraction algorithms to establish the model. Subsequently, partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and support vector machine (SVM) models were developed. The average accuracy of the test set of the two models were 94.9% and 94.4%, respectively, while the PLS-DA model exhibited better effect, and the accuracy of training set and test set reached 96.6% and 96.0%, respectively. We used a set of independent samples for the external validation of the PLS-DA model, and the prediction accuracy was 95.2%. Overall, the proposed prediction models based on MIR spectroscopy can be used for low-cost, rapid, and large-scale classification of A1 and A2 milk, which may be extremely beneficial in milk production industries. • A1 and A2 milk identification was feasible using MIR spectroscopy. • UVE and CARS algorithm can used to extract spectral characteristic variables. • PLS-DA model exhibited better effect than SVM model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]