M. Tech. Chemistry. / Aims to evaluate, compare and modify existing methods and investigate new methods for the qualitative and quantitative determination of melamine. Specific aims were to: evaluate and modify an existing GC-MS15 and HPLC-DAD method16, published by US FDA, for the determination of melamine in pet food and baby milk powder formulae ; develop a novel HPLC fluorescence detection (FLD) method for the determination of melamine in pet food and baby milk powder formulae ; compare these methods to a commercial ELISA detection method for the determination of melamine in pet food samples previously implicated in the poisoning of dogs ; apply NIR spectroscopy with subsequent multivariate analysis to rapidly determine melamine in pet food; and compare the different methods statistically with respect to their analytical performances.