Abstract: Milk lipids are one of the key nutritional and flavor components in milk. Milk phospholipids (PLs) are of increasing interest due to their numerous physiological activities. The content of PLs in milk and milk products is difficult to analyze because milk and milk products are complex matrices that contain multiple PLs. In the Chinese literature, only a few studies have been reported to detect PLs in milk and milk products. The methods to detect PLs in milk and milk products reported in the English literature mainly include high-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detector, thin layer chromatography, liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy and 31P nuclear magnetic resonance. In this article, we present a comprehensive review of the progress that has been made in determining the content of PLs in milk and milk products and in developing methods for the functional evaluation, and isolation and quantification of dairy PLs in the past two decades. We expect that this review will provide a reference for researchers in this filed and also provide a theoretical basis for the application of PLs in novel dairy products especially infant formula and for product labelling.

Key words: phospholipids; detection methods; dairy products; milk fat composition; milk