Detection of acetone in milk through odor towards monitoring of ketosis in dairy cows

Determining subclinical ketosis of dairy cows is of great importance in terms of economic losses because ketotic cows even in subclinical ketosis reduce milk production. When dairy cows are affected by ketosis, they produce high level of ketone bodies including acetone, therefore, the detection of such ketone bodies is useful for diagnosis of ketosis. In this study, we demonstrated the detection of acetone in milk samples in the range from 1 to 10 ppm in the vapor phase, which corresponds to the acetone level of subclinical ketosis in a milk sample, using a nanomechanical Membrane-type Surface stress Sensor (MSS). It was proved that the signal output clearly correlates to the vapor concentration of acetone with +/- 0.40 ppm root-meansquare deviation (RMSD). The present study provides a potential sensor for non-invasive monitoring of ketosis through milk odor.