Automated Impedance Measurements for Rapid Screening of Milk Microbial Content

The electrical impedance of media is altered with chemical changes brought about by microbial metabolism and growth. Time required to bring about readily detectable change (detection time - DT) is a function of the initial levels of microorganisms in the sample. DTs were compared to Standard Plate Counts for 407 milk samples - homogenized, low fat, skim and raw. Using the criterion that a sample of pasteurized milk with a DT of 7 h or less was indicative of a plate count of 10,000/ml or greater, 323 of 380 samples were correctly classified. For raw milk, the DT was 10 h to resolve samples into greater or less than 10,000 organisms per ml. Results of a preliminary study on estimation of psychrotrophs in pasteurized milk showed that impedance monitoring at 21 C provided a 22-h screen correctly classifying 88% of the samples into categories of more than or less than 1,000 organisms per ml. Better agreement (91%) in a shorter time (13.7 h) was obtained with a screen for 10,000 organisms. Finally, for the first 22 samples analyzed, keeping quality data on pasteurized milk have correlated better with post-pasteurization impedance measurements than with either post-pasteurization total counts or psychrotrophic counts.