Effect of Frozen Storage Time on the Proteolysis of Soft Cheeses Studied by Principal Component Analysis of Proteolytic Profiles

Abstract

Port Salut Argentino cheeses were frozen, stored in a freezer at −22 °C for different periods, and slowly thawed. After thawing, some cheeses were immediately sampled while others were sampled after different refrigerated storage times. Reversed Phase High Performance Liquid chromatograms were compared applying principal component analysis. The information obtained from the chromatograms was successfully summarized in 2 dimensions accounting for 93.4% of the data variation. According to sample grouping, there were differences between Port Salut Argentino cheeses due to the ripening during refrigerated storage for up to 60 days at 4 7deg;C. However, for cheeses that were sampled immediately after slow thawing, there was no significant effect of the frozen storage time in cheese proteolysis, from 1 to 60 d.