Evaluation of Multi Blade Shear (MBS) for determining texture of raw and cooked broiler breast fillets with the woody breast myopathy

Authors: ZHANG, JIAN - Beijing Academy Of Agricultural Sciences; Zhuang, Hong; Bowker, Brian; STELZLENI, ALEXANDER - University Of Georgia; YANG, YI - China Agricultural University; PANG, BIN - Qingdao Agricultural University; GAO, YUE - Suzhou Polytechnic Institute Of Agriculture; THIPPAREDDI, HARSHAVARDHAN - University Of Georgia

Submitted to: Poultry Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/26/2021
Publication Date: 3/12/2021
Citation: Zhang, J., Zhuang, H., Bowker, B.C., Stelzleni, A.M., Yang, Y., Pang, B., Gao, Y., Thippareddi, H. 2021. Evaluation of Multi Blade Shear (MBS) for determining texture of raw and cooked broiler breast fillets with the woody breast myopathy. Poultry Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2021.101123.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2021.101123

Interpretive Summary: The woody breast myopathy (WB) is a novel chicken muscle abnormality. The key difference between normal breast fillets 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. One of them is the Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear (MORS) method. Among the existing instrumental methods for measuring meat tenderness, MORS is a more recently introduced method for assessing poultry meat texture. The MORS method has some advantages over industry standards such as the Warner-Bratzler and Allo-Kramer (AK) shear methods. It needs almost no sample preparation and is less time-consuming, simpler to perform, and equivalent in performance to the Warner-Bratzler and AK shear in predicting tenderness of cooked poultry breast meat. In the MORS method, the dimensions of the blade are typically 24-mm long, 8.9-mm wide, and 1-mm thick. Each shear made with the 8.9 mm blade is very limited in area on a broiler breast fillet, whereas shear values can vary significantly between locations within a chicken breast fillet. Therefore, a minimum of four shears per fillet are recommended for a reliable estimate of tenderness using MORS, with five shears or more being required to further improve the reliability of the tenderness estimates. This recommendation makes the MORS method more time-consuming when large sample sizes (>100) are required. In order to overcome this disadvantage, in this study, a novel multi-blade shear (MBS) apparatus was developed that has the ability to shear a larger proportion of the breast in a single pass. The ability of the MBS apparatus for measuring shear of both raw and cooked broiler breast fillets with different degrees of the WB myopathy in broiler breast fillets was evaluated. Our results show that the MBS method can be used for both raw and cooked chicken breast meat with minimal sample preparation before shear, similar to the MORS method. The advantages of the MBS method include that it works either as well as or better than MORS method in characterizing tactile properties of broiler breast meat with the WB myopathy and correlating texture measurements with severity of the WB myopathy (or predicting the WB) in broiler fillets regardless of meat state (fresh never-frozen versus frozen-thawed and raw versus cooked) and the shear parameter (force or energy). With the MBS method, only one shear measurement is required compared to at least four measurements using MORS. Data indicate that MBS measurements are overall, more precise than the MORS. Therefore, the MBS method could be a good alternative for texture measurements of broiler breast meat with the WB myopathy. Since MORS is increasingly used as a routine method in measuring texture quality and predicting tenderness of cooked normal poultry breast meat, the application of this new MBS method for predicting poultry meat tenderness should be further explored.

Technical Abstract: The objective of this study was to evaluate a novel multi-blade Shear (MBS) method for measuring texture properties of both raw and cooked broiler fillets (pectoralis major) with the woody breast (WB) myopathy. A total of 180 broiler breast fillets (60 normal [NOR], 60 moderate WB [MOD], and 60 severe WB [SEV]) in two meat states (fresh never-frozen, n = 144; frozen/thawed, n = 36) were chosen based on their WB scores. In each trial, half of the fillets were used for measuring raw meat texture and the other half for cooked meat texture measurement. Blunt Meullenet-Owens Razor Sear (BMORS) was used for comparison. In fresh raw broiler fillets, both the MBS and BMORS methods detected significant differences between NOR, MOD, and SEV fillets (P < 0.001). In cooked broiler fillets, the methods were equivalent in their ability to separate SEV from NOR fillets. The MBS measurements showed greater Spearman correlation coefficients with the WB scores (Rs = 0.70 in raw and = 0.33 in cooked) compared to the BMORS measurements (Rs = 0.63 in raw and = 0.27 in cooked) for both fresh and cooked breast fillets. In addition, the MBS measurements were either as precise as or more precise than BMORS measurements regardless of meat condition (fresh versus cooked) and the shear parameter. These results suggest that the MBS method is more reliable in measuring tactile characteristics of broiler breast fillets with the WB myopathy compared with the BMORS method.