Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, 47521 Cesena, Italy.
Department of Food and Environmental Sciences, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Poult Sci. 2017 Sep 1;96(9):3465-3472. doi: 10.3382/ps/pex115.
Recently the poultry industry faced an emerging muscle abnormality termed wooden breast (WB), the prevalence of which has dramatically increased in the past few years. Considering the incomplete knowledge concerning this condition and the lack of information on possible variations due to the intra-fillet sampling locations (superficial vs. deep position) and aging of the samples, this study aimed at investigating the effect of 7-d storage of broiler breast muscles on histology, texture, and particle size distribution, evaluating whether the sampling position exerts a relevant role in determining the main features of WB. With regard to the histological observations, severe myodegeneration accompanied by accumulation of connective tissue was observed within the WB cases, irrespective of the intra-fillet sampling position. No changes in the histological traits took place during the aging in either the normal or the WB samples. As to textural traits, although a progressive tenderization process took place during storage (P ≤ 0.001), the differences among the groups were mainly detected when raw meat rather than cooked was analyzed, with the WB samples exhibiting the highest (P ≤ 0.001) 80% compression values. In spite of the increased amount of connective tissue components in the WB cases, their thermally labile cross-links will account for the similar compression and shear-force values as normal breast cases when measured on cooked samples. Similarly, the enlargement of extracellular matrix and fibrosis might contribute in explaining the different fragmentation patterns observed between the superficial and the deep layer in the WB samples, with the superficial part exhibiting a higher amount of larger particles and an increase in particles with larger size during storage, compared to normal breasts.
最近，家禽业面临一种新兴的肌肉异常，称为木质鸡胸（WB），这种异常在过去几年中的发生率显著增加。考虑到对此情况的了解不完全，以及由于样本内的取样位置（表面与深部）和样本老化而导致的可能变化的信息缺乏，本研究旨在调查 7 天贮存对肉鸡胸肌的组织学、质地和颗粒大小分布的影响，评估取样位置是否对确定 WB 的主要特征起重要作用。关于组织学观察，无论在样本内的哪个位置取样，在 WB 病例中都观察到严重的肌退行性变，伴有结缔组织的积累。在正常或 WB 样本中，组织学特征在老化过程中均未发生变化。就质地特征而言，尽管在贮存过程中发生了渐进性嫩化过程（P ≤ 0.001），但在分析生肉而不是熟肉时，各组之间的差异主要被检测到，WB 样本表现出最高的（P ≤ 0.001）80%压缩值。尽管 WB 病例中的结缔组织成分增加，但它们的热不稳定交联在测量熟肉样本时，将与正常鸡胸病例的压缩和剪切力值相似。同样，细胞外基质的扩大和纤维化可能有助于解释 WB 样本中深部和浅部之间观察到的不同碎裂模式，与正常胸部相比，浅部表现出更大数量的较大颗粒和贮存过程中颗粒尺寸增大。
