NMR Relaxation of Dairy Products

Abstract

The applications of NMR to dairy products are numerous and can be divided into three groups. The first group comprises the use of high-resolution NMR spectroscopy for the molecular study of dairy compounds such as casein and whey protein [1,2]. The second group involves the use of Magnetic resonance imaging applied to dairy processing [3,4], and the third group concerns studies based on NMR relaxation measurements. This chapter will focus only on NMR relaxation applications, including pulsed field gradient NMR for the measurement of molecular diffusion. Relaxation measurements on dairy products have usually been performed at low field and the main aim was to propose a non-destructive technique to determine water or fat content [5] and solid fat content (SFC) [6]. These applications use NMR signal intensity and little attention has been paid to relaxation time values and their significance. We have therefore chosen to review this field of application specifically.