Detection of chicken breast muscles affected by Wooden Breast abnormality by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and dielectric spectroscopy

Over the past few years, the poultry industry has faced high occurrence rates of breast muscle abnormalities (such as the Wooden Breast – WB – condition) that impair the appearance and quality traits of the meat obtained by fast-growing broilers. In slaughter and meat processing plants, this abnormality is associated with high rejection and downgrading rates, thus resulting in significant economic losses and impaired sustainability of the broiler industry. Within this context, the present study aimed at evaluating the effect of WB on water mobility through dielectric spectroscopy in the microwave range and protons’ transverse relaxation time (T2) by Time-Domain Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (TD-NMR) and further evaluate a possible online technique to distinguish normal and affected breasts. For this purpose, 147 Pectoralis major muscles were selected from the same flock of fast-growing broilers (42 days old, 2.8 kg average live weight) 3 hours post-mortem and classified as Normal or WB (N=74/group; WB=73/group) according to their phenotype. Data were then analyzed by Student’s t-test and considered significant at p<0.05. Compared to the normal breasts, WB tended to have high values of dielectric constant and loss factor, suggesting a higher water mobility and a higher solvate capacity. This evidence was confirmed by TD-NMR, which showed a lower relative concentration of myofibrillar water in the WB samples in favor of the more mobile extra-myofibrillar fraction. Based on the above, a rapid electric technique coupled with PLS-DA was developed for the online classification of abnormal WB meat at slaughter plants.