Vol 44, No. 4;Apr 2014 301 Pretoria, South Africa Application of microwave as an alternative home pasteurization method for camel milk; microbiological, physiochemical and biochemical study. Ali Alkaladi 1 , Mohamed Afifi 1,2* and Rania Kamal 3 1 Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, North Campus, PO Box 11508, Jeddah, 21463, Saudi Arabia. 2 Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Zagazig University, Egypt. 3 Food Control Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Zagazig University, Egypt. * Corresponding Author Mohamed Afifi e-mail mama200100@gmail.com, mafifi@kau.edu.sa tel. 00966509562637 Statement of novelty: This work was conducted to study the application of microwave in pasteurization of the camel milk. For the first record the treatment of camel milk for 40s in microwave is sufficient for complete pasteurization of it without adversely affect it's properties and components. Abstract The present study aimed to compare the efficacy of microwave treatments of camel milk with the standard milk heat pasteurization method in the terms of microbiological, physiochemical and biochemical components changes. Fifty camel’s milk samples were divided into 7 parts for each, one part examined raw the other was pasteurized 62.3 °C for 30 min and the rest were exposed to microwave for 10, 20 ,30, 40 and 50S. The results indicated the insufficiency of heating camel milk at 62.3 °C for 30 m especially when it has a high initial microbial count. Contrarily, microwave treatment at 40 seconds was enough to destruct all tested microbial content of examined camel milk. Unfortunately, both heat treatment and microwave adversely affect the vital component of the camel's milk as vitamin C, E, glutathione (GSH), insulin and Immunoglobulin G, in addition to elevation of the oxidative products as molondialdehyd (MDA) and nitric oxide Keywords: Camel milk, Pasteurization, Microwave, microbiological and biochemical properties Introduction Peoples in many world countries are widely consuming camel milk especially in the arid and semi-arid zones for its nutritional value, medicinal properties and availability. Many reports had reported many health associated benefits of camel milk. It was found that camel milk contains good qualities of lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, lysozyme and other antibacterial and antiviral protective proteins, which make it more superior over cow milk (Elagamy, 2000; Mal & Pathak, 2010). Camel milk is considered to have anti-carcinogenic (Magjeed, 2005), a protective effect against cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity (Afifi, 2010), hypo-allergic (Shabo et al., 2005) and anti-diabetic properties (Agrawal et al., 2003). A high content of unsaturated fatty acids contributes to its overall dietary quality (Konuspayeva et al., 2008). The low quantity of ß-casein and the lack of ß-lactoglobulin are linked to the hypo-allergic