Starter culture can extract more curd from milk, increasing cheese capacity – DuPont

23-Mar-2012 - Last updated on 14-Mar-2017 at 20:13 GMT

DuPont Nutrition and Health claims that its new cheese starter culture will ‘boost capacity without increasing milk consumption’, by saving protein commonly lost in whey waste when producers use other cultures.

The firm said its new Choozit Fresh starter culture, targeting Quark and other cheese manufacturers in Europe, can extract 4% more curd from milk; designed for direct inoculation into the cheese vat, the product is pH stable and has a comparable fermentation time to other cultures.

DuPont said its cultures were the result of research aimed at the quantity and levels of non-protein nitrogen in acid whey waste and the need to optimise raw material usage.

Extra yield

“This extra yield is linked to the specific formulation meaning specific strain selection,” Annie Mornet, global product manager, Choozit, DuPont Nutrition and Health told DairyReporter.com.

“Other cultures, including bulk starters, generate high levels of proteolytic enzymes during their propagation - these enzymes degrade the proteins, fragments of which are released during fermentation in the cheese tank and lost during separation.

“We can observe and quantify this via the Non-Protein Nitrogen (NPN) variation in the whey - the more proteolytic enzymes you have, the higher the NPN you will have in the whey,” she added.

“To reduce this increase in NPN, specific cultures were selected. Choozit Fresh does not contribute significantly to the increase in the NPN value during fermentation, saving this protein in the fresh cheese.”

Mornet said: “This project started a number of years ago. The theory was evident from the start, however the time has been spent on the quantification and documentation of the benefits so as to credibly demonstrate and substantiate our claims.”

Increased volume

DuPont nutrition and health claimed that, given a weekly milk consumption of three million kilograms, the culture can add an extra 16.5 metric tonnes to the fresh cheese volume produced.

Mornet added: “The industry has always yield optimisation focus-process time - optimisation of the waste - how to "extract" the total solids is the focus of all the dairy producers - if you can do more cheese with the same quantity of raw material (the milk here) you will optimise your cost and get some extra-benefits - this is what the Choozit Fresh is providing to our customers.”