Forensic scientists are unable to say if a skull kept in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's home town of Salzburg is indeed that of the composer born 250 years ago.

Austrian public TV station ORF last year commissioned an international research project - dubbed CSI Mozart after the award-winning US TV series - to analyse teeth extracted from the skull.

ORF told the scientists to apply methods such as genetic testing to determine the identity of the skull, which the Mozarteum foundation in Salzburg obtained in 1902.

But the scientists - from Austria's University of Innsbruck and the US Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland - drew a blank.

They compared the skull's DNA with genetic information retrieved from a grave where Mozart's niece and his grandmother were believed to have been buried.

They found that neither of the two female skeletons was related, nor was either of them related to the person whose skull rests in the Mozarteum's safe.

"The identity of the individuals concerned in the Mozart family grave has proven to be a mystery," said Innsbruck University's Walther Parson.

So the skull's secret, which began over 200 years ago, remains unsolved.

Joseph Rothmayer, a gravedigger who buried Mozart in a pauper's grave in Vienna's Central Cemetery in 1791 claimed to have unearthed the skull 10 years later.

It ended up at the Mozarteum a century later.

The foundation put the skull on display until 1940, when its exhibition was deemed indecent and the relic went into a safe and was only made available to scientists.

Many argued the skull belonged to Mozart, while others cast doubt on its authenticity.

- Reuters