Direct determination of lactulose in heat‐treated milk using diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy and partial least squares regression

The aim of this work was the direct determination of lactulose (LCT) concentration in freeze-dried heat-treated milks using diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (DRIFTS) without any chemical pretreatment of the milk. The ‘actual’ lactulose concentrations estimated by means of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were correlated with the spectral region 1286–754 cm−1 of DRIFTS spectra in the second-derivative form of the milk samples using partial least squares (PLS) regression. A linear relationship was established between the ‘actual’ and the concentrations recalculated using the built model. The proposed DRIFTS method is simple, rapid and low cost.