Developments of nondestructive techniques for evaluating quality attributes of cheeses: A review.

Cheese is produced around the world in a wide range of flavours, varieties, textures, and shapes, which can be used as a final product in human diet, and as an important ingredient in various foods. With consumer's continuing demand for quality cheese as well as increasing challenge from production facing the industry, nondestructive techniques are increasingly used to evaluate cheese quality. Considering the rapid development of novel nondestructive techniques, relevant literatures in the past 15 years (2004–2018) are reviewed in this paper. The main quality attributes of cheese and the importance of evaluating these attributes are discussed. The principles, developments and applications of computer vision (CV), computed tomography (CT), X-ray system, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), fluorescence spectroscopy, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, hyperspectral imaging (HSI), Raman imaging, ultrasonic and acoustic sensing and other nondestructive techniques are discussed in this review. Among all nondestructive techniques used for cheese quality evaluation, fluorescence spectroscopy is the most used method for classification, NIR spectroscopy is mainly used for predicting chemical components, FTIR spectroscopy shows the greatest scope of applications, while CV, X-ray and MRI are only used for monitoring eye growth. HSI and Raman imaging begins to attract research interest, and synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy gradually replaces front-face fluorescence spectroscopy, whereas CV is no longer applied to cheese evaluation and literatures about NIR spectroscopy also becomes less in recent years. It is hoped that this review should provide information on current research gaps and set some directions for future studies. • Nondestructive techniques for cheese quality evaluation are reviewed. • Cheese attributes and their importance are presented. • Applicability and the pros and cons of nondestructive techniques are discussed. • Future research directions are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]