Development and Validation of Chromogenic Test for Palm Oil Detection in Milk Fat

In India, the adulteration of low-priced palm oil with ghee is a prevalent issue, prompting the need for effective purity assessment methods. While several techniques exist, they often have inherent limitations. Thus, there’s a growing preference for rapid tests in routine quality control.

Currently, a DPPH-based chromogenic assay is employed to detect palm oil presence in ghee, using DPPH solution.

This assay demonstrates specificity across pure ghee and palm oil samples and exhibits sensitivity to detect palm oil adulteration levels of up to 3%. The developed method has also been validated using a radical scavenging activity assay and triglyceride analysis by GC-FID is considered the most promising and internationally accepted method for testing the authenticity of milk fat. The protocol is efficient, robust and sensitive, suggesting its suitability as a platform test in dairy food testing laboratories for routine quality analysis.