Meat Quality And Nondestructive Detection Methods Of Broiler Breast Fillets With Woody Breast Myopathy

The popularity of poultry meat among consumers is due to the healthy image of poultry meat,sensory properties such as desirable texture and color,and the mild flavor profile allowing consumers to impart desired flavors to the meat.The demand for poultry meat has steadily increased and projections predict that the demand will continue to rise.This increase in demand has led the poultry industry to increase the growth rate,feed efficiency,and the size of the breast muscle.The increased growth rate has reached the goals for higher yields and improved feed efficiency,but it is at the expense of meat quality attributes resulting from growth related myopathies.Woody breast(WB),as an example,which is characterized by a distinct hardness of the pale color Pectoralis major muscle of broilers breast fillets with different severity categories(NORM,MOD,SEV)has been a major quality issue in the poultry industry since last decade.At this stage on the analysis of the chicken breast meat quality has been the main method of research on meat quality in the industry,however,quite few reported research about WB meat quality and the methods to detect WB.In this condition,studying on WB still at beginning stage at China and need more research programs to add on the foundation knowledge of WB and extend new ways to detect WB.In this study,Cobb 500 white feathered birds were used as research object:(1)Weight,fillet dimension(Length(L),Width(W),Top height(H1),Bottom height(H2)),compression forces(CF)were measured and histology sample were made in different WB categories,all collected data were analyzed and to find the suitable features to describe WB,all significant features were adjusted to a BP neural network to predict WB categories.Histology sample suggest that SEV woody breast fillet show high fat,collagen and lower protein levels,connective tissue replacing degenerated muscle tissue and with irregular size of muscle fiber.While NORM fillet related to less connective tissue and uniformed size of muscle fiber.CF,H1 and H2 increased as severity of woody breast increased.CF,F1 and F2,were highly correlated to WB categories and were features to describe WB.(2)Study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of measuring CF,drip loss(DL),fillet dimension,sarcomere length(SL)and gravimetric fragmentation index(GFI)of raw fillets and cook loss(CL)and shear values(MORSE,BMORSE)in cooked fillets to distinguish woody breast in different categories and determine if meat quality features change during short term storage.CF,d 0 weight,total drip loss increased as categorizes of woody breast increased(P<0.05,NORM<MOD<SEV).CF significantly decreased in all categories from d 0 to d 2(P<0.05)and then gradually declined through d 8 with significant difference between d 3 and d 8(P<0.05).DL was significantly higher in SEV fillets than MOD or NORM which were similar after d 1 of storage.Fillets in all categories continued to lose moisture over the 8 d of storage and overall SEV>MOD>NORM for drip loss(P<0.05).H1,H2 and W were higher in SEV fillets than MOD fillets which were higher than NORM fillets(P<0.05),no differ with categories on L,however,H1 and H2 decreased(P<0.05)overtime with L and W increased(P<0.05)indicated that fillets flattened over time.The SL and GFI increased as severity of woody breast increased(SEV>MOD>NORM;P<0.05).The SL decreased in fillets from d1 to d 8 in all categories(P<0.05).The GFI of all categories decreased(P<0.05)from d1 to d 3 storage and no differences between d 3 and d 8 storage(P>0.05).SEV woody breast associate with negative cooked meat quality and quality would not change as hardness decreasing in raw fillets overtime.In addition,shear energy of BMORS could be a better than MORS to distinguish WB in cooked meat.(3)Experiments were conducted to determine the difference of compression force(hardness)changing during short-term storage between fresh(4?)and frozen(-20?)fillets.Meanwhile,research was conducted to determine the shear properties using Meullenet-Owens razor shear(MORS)and Blunt-MORS(BMORS)on cooked fillets with varying degrees of WB that were stored fresh(4C)or frozen(-20C).Additionally,a new method of peak counting on MORS and BMORS data was used to identify WB categories by assessing inner texture features.CF increased as severity of woody breast increased(P<0.05)respectively throughout storage,and frozen storage fillets related to a lower hardness compared to the fresh breast.In cooked fillets,CL was higher(P<0.05)in SEV fillets than MOD and NORM which were similar(P>0.05)in either fresh or frozen fillets.There were no differences(P>0.05)in MORSE due to WB categories,but BMORSE was higher(P<0.05)in SEV fillets compared to MOD and NORM fresh fillets.SEV fillets had higher(P<0.05)PC-MORS than MOD and NORM fillets whereas PC-BMORS increased(P<0.05)as severity of WB increased in the two storage methods.MORSE and BMORSE of most WB categories were higher(P<0.05)in frozen fillets than fresh except BMORSE of SEV fillets which were not impacted by storage method.The results indicate that SEV WB in both storage methods negatively affect cook loss and shear properties(excluding MORSE).The new method of peak counting using the texture analyzer was useful in distinguishing among WB categories.The PC-BMORS was able to detect differences between each category and was not affected by storage method of fresh or frozen.(4)Study was conducted to determine the difference of raw and/or cooked fillet meat quality of different region(cranial vs middle)on breast fillet in small and big birds.In raw fillets,CF,RMORSE,and PC-RMORS increased as severity of WB increased in either cranial or middle region(P<0.05).CF was higher in cranial region than middle region at all woody category(P<0.05).RMORSE and PC-RMORS of cranial region were higher than middle region in MOD and SEV(P<0.05),while no difference due to location was observed in NORM.In cooked fillets,CL increased as WB increased.Similar to the raw fillets,CMORSE,CBMORSE,PC-CMORS,and PC-CBMORS of cooked fillets were higher in SEV than MOD which was higher than NORM in 9 week birds,while in 6 week birds CBMORSE was higher in NORM than MOD and SEV,and no differ in CMORSE at all woody categories.All shear properties were higher(P<0.05)in cranial region than middle region in MOD and SEV while no difference due to location was observed in NORM.The result indicate textural properties are more severe with woody breast than normal breast fillet and that there is also greater severity of the condition in the cranial region.This may have impact on sensorial texture properties as well.On the other hand,taking age factor in consideration,meat quality in 9 week broiler fillets were worse than 6 week broiler fillets on both raw and cooked meat.(5)Developing methods to identify WB online would be valuable to the industry in efforts to sort product.Study was conducted to determine effectiveness of image measurements of broilers carcass surfaces to identify WB carcasses prior to deboning and additionally evaluate the relationship to live bird,carcass and fillet WB scores.Also,to determine effectiveness of air deformation of fillet surfaces to identify WB in raw fillets of broilers.All new detect methods to identify woody breast would provide foundation knowledge for real time detection system development on processing line.The LWB and EWB highly correlated with WB score(r=0.64 and 0.78,respectively;P<0.0001).F1 were greater(P<0.05)in SEV and MOD carcass than NORM.CF,F1,F4,and F6 were greater(P<0.05)in SEV than MOD and NORM which were also different(P<0.05).F2,F3 were decreased as severity of woody breast increased,and F5 were lower in SEV than NORM(P<0.05)while MOD was intermediate.The results suggest that WB may be identified on the carcass level using carcass imaging and therefore may potentially be used as tool for online detection for WB before deboning or further processing.On the other part,CF increased as severity of WB increased(P<0.05,NORM<MOD<SEV).Diameter measurements of air deformation decreased(P<0.05)as WB categories increased regardless of distance(D12,D15,or D18).CF was moderately correlated to D12(R=-0.43),but highly correlated to D15(R=-0.76)and D18(R=-0.80).The results indicate WB can be identified by CF and that the use of air deformation in raw fillets may be potentially used as tool for online detection.The developed BP neutral network using these features of two different methods could success identify WB with accuracy reach to 96.67%and 95.24%,respectively.Using above two different ways to detect woody breast and combined with image processing and machine version technology to develop automatic system in short future may be a potential way to classify woody breast on line.