Breast Meat Quality Evaluation

For breast meat (Pectoralis major), quality, pH, cooking loss, water holding capacity (WHC), and shear force were analyzed following the methods described in [16 (link)]. The pH of the right breast meat was measured using an Orion 230A pH meter (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) as follows: 10 g of meat was homogenized with distilled water (90 mL) using a homogenizer (Polytron PT-2500E; Kinematica, Lucerne, Switzerland) for 15 s, and the shear force of the breast meat was measured using a texture analyzer TA1 (Lloyd Instruments, Fareham, UK) with a V blade. To measure cooking loss, the samples were weighed, placed in a plastic bag, and then cooked in a water bath (80 °C) for 20 min. After cooking, the samples were cooled at room temperature for 10 min, and cooking loss was calculated as the percentage of loss in relation to the initial weight. The left breast meat was used to measure water holding capacity (WHC). Breast meat (0.5 g) was placed on a Millipore Ultrafree-MC (Millipore, Bedford, MA, USA), boiled at 80 °C for 20 min, cooled to room temperature, and then centrifuged at 4 °C for 10 min at 2000× g using a centrifuge machine to measure water loss.