Peptidomics in extended shelf life dairy products, for assessment of proteolysis and product quality

Some extended shelf life dairy products develop insoluble material which is referred to as unwanted protein aggregation. This phenomenon appears at varying time points during the shelf life. It occurs seemingly randomly in some productions and not in others for the same product. So far no decisive factor for its development has been identified, indicating protein chemical based differences between the products, due to biological diversities in the applied raw material. This is a very plausible assumption since milk is supplied from multiple farms to the dairies. In this particular project we used re-hydrated industrial whey protein isolate (WPI) produced from cheese whey. This originates from multiple cheese dairies, which also adds to the inhomogeneity of the product.