Microcheese

Screening
High-throughput cheese manufacturing for screening and testing is now possible with the development of a new MicroCheese system. In one run up to 600 “microcheeses” of 150 mg are produced in different (micro) cheese vats with separate protocols, allowing massive parallel testing and optimisation of cultures, enzymes and process conditions.

Real cheese
Its strength lies in the fact that all key properties resemble the industrially produced cheese. The use of microcheese gives opportunities in the field of improving starter cultures and cheese ingredients as well as in assessing microbial safety aspects. In addition, routes for product development in rapidly developing areas including low-fat and low-salt cheeses can be followed. Large-scale screening is enabled in a cost-effective way. The MicroCheese model was developed at NIZO food research as part of the research programme of the Kluyver Center for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation, and a patent application was filed.

Application
For CSK, a major dairy ingredient supplier, NIZO food research used the MicroCheese system to get a better insight into the effect of individual strains and mixed-strain starters on cheese flavour formation.