Polyphenolic transmission to Segureno lamb meat from ewes' diet supplemented with the distillate from rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) leaves.

The aim of the present work is to study whether the introduction of rosemary plant byproduct, from plant steam distillation, in daily Segurena sheep feeding allows the transfer of active antioxidant components to lamb meat, without detriment to the animal productivity. For this, 36 Segurena ewes were assigned randomly to three homogeneous groups. One group was fed a basal diet as a control and the diet of the other two groups was modified by substituting 10 or 20% of the control diet (respectively) with distilled rosemary leaves. Chromatographic analysis allowed the identification of 11 polyphenolic components previously identified in the rosemary and basal diet pellets, respectively. Among them, rosmarinic acid, carnosol, and carnosic acid were the phenolic components that had a significantly increased presence ( P < 0.05) in the lamb meat from sheep mothers fed this aromatic herb, when compared to the control group. The incorporation of this byproduct into the animal diet favored the antioxidant capacity of these lamb meat samples. Fresh meat produced on rosemary had higher total ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) ( P < 0.05), greater ability to reduce ABTS*+, and lower IC50 (DPPH*) ( P < 0.05) values when compared to the control group. Because no statistically significant differences were detected among the results obtained from the lamb meat belonging to the different ewe groups fed rosemary leaf extract (10 or 20%), it can be concluded that the incorporation of distilled rosemary leaves at a rate of 10% of the ewes' diet should be enough to improve the lamb meat antioxidant status.