Department of Food Service Management and Ditetitics, The Thassim Beevi Abdul Kader College For Women, Kilakarai.
Six brands of pasteurized milk packs were collected, which had a high market turnover In and around Madurai. The nutrients like protein, fat, lactose, calcium, total solids, solids non fat, microbial load, keeping quality and effectiveness of pasteurization were ana\yzed using standardized procedures. Curd was prepared out of the selected brands of milk and tested for organoleptic changes and shelf life for a period of 72 hours. From the study it was found that the nutrient composition of Arokya brand was within the standard limits with fat 3.65%, protein 3.47%, lactose 4.9%. All the samples had solid non fat and total solids with standard limits of 8.55 to 10.5% and 11.4% to 14% respectively. Bacterial count was also within standard microblal limlts of 1000–10,000 microbes per ml, Arokya, SNP, Vijay had very good keeping quality with <4000 mlcrobes/ml and took longer time for dye decolorisatlon indicating its keeping quality to be very good. All the brands of selected milk had undergone effective pasteurization techniques, since they all showed negative In the presence of phosphates test. The shelf life and organoleptic changes of curd prepared were tested for 72 hours and it was found that the acidity of 1st and 2nd day curds were within the standard limits of 0.65% to 0.85% and yeast and mould count ranged from 30–85/ml. The mean overall acceptability score was 6.9 for curd prepared out of Arokya milk, which had higher acceptability score than any other brand selected. Thus the study reveals that in terms of nutrient composition, keeping quality and product acceptability of Arokya was better than any other brand.
