Camel milk preservation: matrix effects across conventional and emerging technologies

Camel milk supports food security, nutrition and rural economies across arid regions, while its commercial development is expanding towards refrigerated products, fermented foods, powders and functional ingredients. This transition exposes a preservation problem that differs from that of conventional dairy chains. Variable conditions before processing determine the initial microbial and enzymatic load, whereas the distinctive organisation of camel-milk proteins, minerals and dispersed phases alters treatment delivery, physical stability and quality retention. This critical narrative review integrates matrix knowledge with direct evidence on established and emerging preservation processes. Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, PubMed, CAB Abstracts and Google Scholar were searched for relevant studies available up to August 2026. The evidence reveals no simple hierarchy of preservation technologies. Cooling, controlled fermentation, pasteurisation and drying remain the practical foundation of camel-milk processing, but their performance is bounded by raw-milk history and by matrix responses that include aggregation, weak gel formation, oxidation and loss of powder stability. These constraints have stimulated interest in lower-temperature and non-thermal approaches that may widen the interval between microbial control and unacceptable product modification. High-pressure processing currently offers the most developed pathogen-specific evidence within this group, while the reported performance of UV-C and ultrasound remains closely tied to reactor geometry, energy distribution and temperature history. Other emerging approaches are supported mainly by physicochemical observations or evidence transferred from non-camel matrices. Across all process classes, nominal equipment settings and immediate reductions in background microbiota provide an incomplete account of preservation performance. Reliable interpretation requires the treatment delivered within the product to be considered together with matrix composition, microbial target, quality boundaries and behaviour after processing. Camel-milk preservation should therefore be approached as a matrix-dependent process-design problem rather than as the selection of an individual technology.