Aplicación de la electroforesis capilar para el análisis y seguimiento del grado de maduración de quesos de oveja y mezcla de la provincia de Burgos

Abstract

The proteolysis of caseins is the most important marker of cheese maturation. In the present Doctoral Thesis, experimental design is applied to optimise the separation of cow¿s and ewe¿s milk caseins by means of capillary electrophoresis (CE); the bovine casein hydrolysis degradation products released by the action of plasmin, chymosin, and Neutrase® (commercial preparation used to accelerate cheese maturation) were monitored on a time interval basis; and multivariate analysis of the protein profile of ewe¿s milk cheese and mixture cheese (cow-ewe) was used in order to find a correlation with the ripening times. The best analytical experimental conditions were determined, being able to separate all the casein genetic variants from cow and ewe with linear response against concentration and very good reproducibility. Applying multivariate analysis to the proteolytic profiles from ewe¿s milk cheeses and mixture cheeses, the maturation times were successfully predicted with a very small error.