Cheese quality and authenticity: new technologies help solve an age-old problem
Christopher Pillidge A * , Roya Afshari A and Harsharn Gill AA School of Science, RMIT University, Bundoora, Vic. 3083, Australia.
Dr Christopher Pillidge is a Lecturer in Food Technology at RMIT University. Before joining RMIT he worked for over 18 years for the New Zealand dairy industry, including at Fonterra, where he worked on cheese lactic acid bacteria and probiotics. In 2006 he moved from New Zealand to join Dairy Innovation Australia Ltd. He took up a research position at RMIT in 2016. His research interests include food microbiology, lactic acid bacteria and use of molecular methods to solve food industry problems. |
Dr Roya Afshari is an Honorary Research Fellow at RMIT University. She was awarded her PhD from RMIT University in 2020. Her research showed that multi-omics together with data integration analysis represents a powerful new approach for gaining deeper insights into the microbiota–metabolite interactions that underpin cheese flavour and quality. In 2021, she joined a commercial pharmaceutical and food ingredients company in Melbourne. Her research interests include molecular microbiology, metabolomics and use of multi-omics technologies to study food and natural products. |
Harsharn Gill is a Professor of Food and Health Biosciences at RMIT University. He has over 25 years of experience in leading and managing food, nutrition and health R&D in the private and public sectors. Before joining RMIT, he held senior R&D leadership roles in Australia and New Zealand. He has received several major awards and has been appointed to international expert panels, including WHO/FAO, NIH and IDF. Professor Gill sits on the editorial boards for several international scientific journals and patent-protected products resulting from his research have been commercialised globally. |
Microbiology Australia 43(2) 52-56 https://doi.org/10.1071/MA22019
Submitted: 24 March 2022 Accepted: 21 April 2022 Published: 17 May 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the ASM. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Cheese represents a complex ecosystem of starter and non-starter bacteria, with populations changing over time as the cheese matures. Successive microbial communities, particularly in aged cheeses like cheddar, have a profound impact on the final cheese flavour and quality. Being able to accurately predict cheese ripening outcomes at an early stage, based on cost-effective analyses, would be of great benefit to cheesemakers. In the past, there has been a significant gap between microbiological and chemical information obtained from omics and its application to the cheese industry, but thanks to recent advances in omics analytical methods, computing programs and sensor technologies, this gap is narrowing.
Keywords: cheese authenticity, cheese quality, metabolomics, microbial profiling, multi‐omics, proteomics, sensors.
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