Implications of wooden breast defect on technological properties of chicken breast fillets

In the last few years, different muscle myopathies have mostly appeared in the breast muscle of broiler chickens. Wooden breast defect is a recent emerging myopathy which has been macroscopically described by areas of substantial hardness and slightly outbulging in breast fillets. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of wooden breast defect on the quality traits of Pectoralis major muscle in broiler chickens. In each of the two replications, twelve normal and wooden fillets were selected from the same flock and used to assess technological properties of non-marinated (pH, colour, compression test, drip loss, cooking loss and Warner-Bratzler shear force) and marinated meat (marinade uptake, purge loss, cooking loss and Warner-Bratzler shear force). Raw wooden fillets exhibited higher compression values (4.0 vs. 2.0 kg; P<0.01). In addition, even if pH did not vary between groups, wooden fillets were paler (L*, 57.2 vs. 55.9; P<0.01) and yellower (b*, 3.3 vs. 2.7; P<0.01). Moreover, wooden fillets had lower marinade uptake and exhibited higher cooking losses on both non-marinated (29.0 vs. 22.7%; P<0.01) and marinated (18.5 vs. 15.5%, P<0.01) meat samples. Finally, higher shear force values were observed in marinated wooden fillets after cooking (1.45 vs. 1.27 kg/mm2; P<0.05), while no differences were found in non-marinated samples. In conclusion, overall results revealed that wooden breast defect had dramatically adverse effect on water holding and binding capacity and can impart more hard or tough texture in chicken breast meat.