Discrimination of pork content in mixtures with raw minced camel and buffalo meat using FTIR spectroscopic technique

The structural characterization of meats such as camel, buffalo, sheep and pork was studied using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) in the range (4000 cm^-1 - 400 cm^-1). Also the structural characterization of 10%, 30%, 50% and 70% (W/W) pork-in-camel and pork-in-buffalo mixtures meats were studied using this technique. All the samples were homogenized and dried using phosphorous penta-oxide. The structural assignments of the characteristic absorption bands of the samples under investigation were discussed. The relative content of protein to lipid in the samples was determined using the absorbencies ratios of C=O stretching band (amide I) at 1654 cm^-1 and N-H bending band at 1540 cm^-1 (amide II) to C-H stretching at 2924 cm^-1. A comparison between these ratios for any given samples was carried out. The deconvolution of the FTIR spectra in the region 2000 cm^-1-1000 cm^-1 was used for more characterization of the samples using the area under the peak. The data showed that the camel meat has the highest protein content and this content decreased in the following trend, buffalo sheep pork. In case of pork-in-camel and pork-in-buffalo mixtures, the relative protein to lipid content of them decreased with increasing of pork content in these mixtures.