HACKENSACK, N.J. — Jerome Schuman, who helped introduce Americans to Roquefort, Parmigiano-Reggiano and other imported cheeses, died Friday. He was 90.

The cause was a heart attack, said his son, Neal.

Schuman was chairman of Fairfield, N.J.-based Arthur Schuman Inc., the nation’s largest importer of Italian hard cheese and a major producer of domestic hard cheese.

He joined the family company in 1946 after his World War II service in the Army Air Corps, and was still active in the business.

Schuman was the 2009 recipient of the NCI Laureate Award, the National Cheese Institute’s highest honor. Among his achievements, according to the industry’s umbrella organization, the International Dairy Foods Association was helping food service providers find new sources of grating cheese after supplies were disrupted during World War II.

Schuman worked with the major dairy cooperatives in South America to develop and produce Italian-style cheeses and later expanded his efforts to Eastern Europe.

He also was an innovator in cheese packaging and was the first to put grated cheese in zipper-lock bags.

“He especially loved marketing, thinking of innovative ways to promote and package products,” said his daughter Joan Allen, managing director of Arthur Schuman West, LLC.

For a quarter-century, Arthur Schuman Inc. was the exclusive U.S. importer of Roquefort cheese. Neal Schuman, the company’s president and CEO, said his father had a weakness for the blue-veined cheese, which is made from sheep’s milk and cured in limestone caves in the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, in southern France.

“If you looked in his refrigerator, he had his table cheese, his snacking cheese and his cheese for pasta,” his son said. “He made it to 90 by eating cheese, but he did so in moderation.”

Schuman inspired the company’s 250 New Jersey employees by continuing to come to the office. “When you have a 90-year-old man who still has passion for his work, it permeates through the entire organization,” Neal Schuman said.