Dupont Says New Cheese Starter Cultures Allow Up to 4% More Curd Extraction from Milk

New starter cultures in Dupont Nutrition & Health’s (Copenhagen) Choozit line can extract up to 4% more curd from milk than other cultures, enabling quark (a type of cheese) and other fresh cheese manufacturers to boost their production capacity without increasing milk consumption or requiring extra equipment.

As an example of what that means, the company says that the new Choozit Fresh starter can allow a company with a weekly milk consumption of three million kilos to add an extra 16.5 metric tons to the fresh cheese volume produced-at no extra cost. Dupont says the goal is to relieve the price pressures on manufacturers by optimizing raw material usage.

The cultures are also designed for direct inoculation in the cheese vat, making them easy to use. They also offer a clean, fresh flavor profile; are prone to minimal post-acidification; are pH stable and robust to bacterial attack; and may provide slightly faster fermentation times compared to conventional starter cultures.

According to the company, “With up to four liters of milk required to produce one kilo of quark, the vast quantities of acid whey waste were an obvious research target. Particularly the level of non-protein nitrogen in the acid whey caught the attention of the research team.”

“We found that the non-protein nitrogen was the result of protein loss from the milk, caused by the high protein-degrading enzyme activity of the starter cultures, especially bulk starters, during fermentation,” said Annie Mornet, global product manager, Choozit, Dupont Nutrition & Health. “This protein loss has a direct negative impact on the dry matter content of the curd, reducing final product yield.”’

Dupont says it is working to identify culture strains with low enzyme activity and will continue to look at how maintaining the integrity of milk proteins may help optimize costs for manufacturers.