Measuring moisture in cheese by near infrared absorption spectroscopy.

Data in the literature indicate that the measurement of moisture in cheese by near infrared transmittance (NIT) is more accurate than by reflectance (NIR). The accuracy of the NIT measurement (SEP) was calculated for Edam, Gouda, Brie, Colby, and Cheddar. A range of SEP values (0.12-0.35) was obtained using different methods of calibration for different types of samples. There was close agreement between these results, as they related to the precision of the reference method. The calibration validation technique described as Standard Error of Cross Validation (SECV) generated results that compared very closely to the equivalent SEP values for independent sample sets.