Relationships between instrumental texture measurements and subjective woody breast condition scores in raw broiler breast fillets

Abstract

The objective of this study was to compare the relationships between instrumental texture measurements and subjective woody breast ( WB ) scores in raw broiler breast fillets. A total of 181 broiler breast fillets were scored based on palpable hardness and rigidity ranging from 1.0 to 3.0 in 0.5 increments. Texture properties of raw fillets were measured with 3 different instrumental methods: compression force, blunt Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear ( BMORS ), and Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear ( MORS ). Compression force was measured based on % of fillet height (30%) and distance (10 mm). Blunt Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear and MORS measurements included peak force, energy, and peak counts. One-way ANOVA of instrumental texture measurements were performed. Spearman correlations between WB scores and instrumental texture measurements and Pearson correlations between 3 instrumental measurements were analyzed. ANOVA results showed that the best means separations between WB scores were found with the compression method. The weakest means separations were observed with MORS force and BMORS peak counts. Spearman correlation coefficients showed that there were significant relationships between WB scores and instrumental measurements. The strongest correlations were found between subjective WB scores and compression force measurements (r = 0.58–0.73, P < 0.0001), followed by BMORS force and energy (r = 0.55–0.56, P < 0 0.0001), MORS energy and peak count (r = 0.47–0.50, P < 0 0.0001), and BMORS peak count (r = −0.18, P = 0.015). The weakest correlation was found between the WB scores and MORS force (r = 0.17, P = 0.023). Pearson correlation coefficients between 3 different instrumental texture methods were also significant ( P < 0.0001). These results demonstrate that there are significant correlations between subjective WB scores and instrumental texture measurements but that correlation strength varies with the instrumental method. Instrumental texture measurements can be used as references for subjective WB scores. Compression force method has the best potential for assessing subjective WB condition scores.

Comparing three textural measurements of chicken breast fillets affected by severe wooden breast and spaghetti meat

“…Shear force tests are frequently used on cooked meat samples to determine tenderness, and increased shear force values are associated with increased hardness. In this study, the MORS test on cooked samples did not reveal any differences in shear force, work, peak counts, and Young's modulus between normal and WB fillets (Table 2), which is consistent with the results reported by Pang et al (2020) on raw samples and those of Bowker and Zhuang (2019) on cooked samples. Likely, the higher shearing than compression Table 2.…”

“…The current methods for diagnosing fillets affected by myopathies are visual and palpitation methods, and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, which is used to check raw broiler breast fillets. In both commercial and research situations, subjective scoring is still the predominant method used to categorise chicken fillets under WB conditions (Pang et al 2020). Nevertheless, objective criteria (e.g.…”

Low-Field NMR Analysis of Chicken Patties Prepared with Woody Breast Meat and Implications to Meat Quality

“…Low-field NMR has been successfully used for many years to investigate meat quality and deepen the knowledge about the behavior of water in meat abnormalities such as WB and pale soft exudative (PSE) conditions [5,31]. Data from these previous studies indicate WB fillets have a significant impact on the distribution of water within the muscle tissue and show altered moisture properties (more extra-myofibrillar water, less intra-myofibrillar, and less hydration water) compared to normal fillets [5,6,16]. Figure 2 exhibits that low-field NMR inversion imaging of chicken patties, where A, B, C, D and E represents the low-field NMR imaging of chicken patties with 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of WB addition, respectively.…”

“…Currently, characteristics of water in the WB condition have been analyzed by low-field NMR, and the results show that the content of free water in WB was significantly higher than that in normal meat [6,15]. Although the application of low-field NMR in WB has been common, the quality evaluation of WB in further processed products has not been extensively reported [16]. Therefore, the current study focused on assessing the relationship between water distribution and other meat quality parameters by low-field NMR in chicken meat patties.…”

Evaluation of multi blade shear (MBS) for determining texture of raw and cooked broiler breast fillets with the woody breast myopathy

“…The key difference between normal breast fillets (pectoralis major) and WB meat is tactile properties or hardness on the ventral side at the cranial end of raw broiler breast fillets (pectoralis major). Several instrumental methods have been used to characterize the tactile properties of raw WB samples ( Chatterjee et al., 2016 ; Soglia et al., 2016 ; Sun et al., 2018 ; Pang et al., 2020 ). One of them is the Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear ( MORS ) method.…”