Grated parmigiano reggiano cheese: Authenticity determination and characterization by a novel nanowire device (S3) and GC-MS

Parmigiano Reggiano (PR) cheese is produced from the bovine milk in a limited geographic area in northern Italy. It is one of the oldest traditional cheeses manufactured in Europe (XII century) and is still one of the most esteemed Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cheeses of Italy. The Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese Consortium (CFPR) is the institutional system that covers all the cheese dairy factories and controls the cheese production in terms of cow feeding, cheese manufacture and ripening processes. The aim of this study was to establish a new, rapid, portable, easy-to-use, economic and non-destructive fouling based on nanowire technology device (S3) to control the presence of false grated PR. All the analyzed samples were collected from the Consortium that picked the samples produced in different European countries (three samples from Germany, one from Ireland, one from Latvia and one from Lithuania). The achieved samples were analyzed with the cooperation of multidisciplinary technologies like Colorimeter, pH Meter, GC-MS with SPME and the new nanowire gas sensor device (S3). The applied techniques were able to create a specific database for the S3 device, capable to give results in a few minutes. The use of a Small Sensor System (S3) device to determine the specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of the grated PR is a promising approach offering, at the same time, a simpler, faster and easier to handle (no specialized technicians are required) solution with respect to the analytical techniques (GC-MS, HPLC). However, from the commercial point-of-view, low cost and reduced power consumption are the fundamental features that should entail a sensor device. In this study, S3 device was applied and found to be efficient in the discrimination of the different grated PR cheese samples. In particular, the discrimination was checked quali-quantitatively thanks to the analysis performed with the GC-MS-SPME technique. In fact, the achieved results demonstrated the quali-quantitative differences of the VOCs emitted by the samples. S3 device is a promising tool for the quality discrimination of the PR cheese and other foodstuffs. In our future works, specific database of the grated PR will be amplified for the direct use of S3 in the cheese-chain productions.