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No abstract

Woody Breast (WB) defines a quality issue resulting from a muscle abnormality in chicken meat, which makes the breast meat more rigid and sometimes pale in color with inferior texture. The frequency of this defect in Europe is over 30% and some have argued that similar levels may exist in the United States. Given that chicken with WB are of poor economic value and are discriminated by the consumers, producers face significant economic hardship under the current production paradigm. One of the problems in identifying the biological mechanism responsible for WB is that the occurrence and severity of WB can be only identified after harvest. This study is to investigate the physical characteristics of WB and normal breast (NB) in live chicken using a non-invasive, digital palpation device named as “MyotonPRO®”. This technology provides the measurements of superficial muscles regarding dynamic stiffness (100–1500 N/m; DS), elasticity (0.3–2.5), mechanical stress relaxation time (5–40 ms; MSRT) and ratio of deformation and relaxation time (0.3–2.5; RDRT). One hundred breast meat samples were used in this analysis (WB: 50; NB: 50), which were obtained from a local processing plant one day after harvest and sorted based on WB scoring with the naked eye (0, 1 for NB; 2, 3 for WB). One way ANOVA was used to analyze the data as a statistical model. The least squares means of the following variables were significantly different between WB and NB (P < 0.01): DS (603.4 vs 565.8; N/m), and elasticity (1.40 vs 1.55). However, MSRT and RDRT were not significantly different (P > 0.05). These results collectively show that the non-invasive measurements of WB differ from NB. The degree of muscle hardness in WB can be considered as a trait to be selected, and utilized for the genetic/genomic selection program collecting the measurements before harvest.