Influence of the season on the relationships between NMR transverse relaxation data and water-holding capacity of turkey breast meat

In the last few years the poultry industry has seen a significant deterioration in meat quality properties during the summer season. The objective of this study was to evaluate the seasonal effect (summer and winter) on turkey meat quality assessed by both conventional and low-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (LR-NMR) analysis. Eighty-eight breast muscle samples (35 winter and 53 summer) from BUT-Big 6 turkeys belonging to 16 different flocks, were randomly collected from a commercial processing plant. The samples were analysed for transverse relaxation times (T2) by LR-NMR and for initial pH (15 min post mortem), ultimate pH (24 h post mortem) and pH after cooking, temperature at 15 min post mortem, waterholding capacity (WHC, drip loss, filter paper press wetness and cooking loss) at 24 h post mortem, colour of raw and cooked meat and chemical composition (moisture, lipids and proteins). The results indicate that, during the summer season, turkey breast meat undergoes a relevant WHC decrease. Cluster analysis of the raw LR-NMR data evidenced the presence of two groups corresponding to samples harvested in each different season. Correlations between the LR-NMR signal and the conventional parameters measuring WHC were obtained by a recently proposed type of principal component regression (PCR) termed relative standard deviation PCR.