Effect of Aging on the Quality of Breast Meat from Broilers Affected by Wooden Breast Myopathy

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The study of meat quality of modern birds and their respective myopathies is important to understand the responses of myopathy to the meat quality of these birds. Aging enters as an alternative to avoid losses that this myopathy generates in the poultry industry, with discards of chickens affected by the different degrees of myopathy in wooden breast. The constant genetic evolution that birds have suffered and still suffer during these years is the most plausible cause of the onset of this myopathy. ABSTRACT: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of aging on the quality of breast meat from broilers affected of wooden breast. Samples that were classified as normal (control), moderate (hardness verified only in one region of breast fillet), and severe (hardness verified in all the extension of breast fillet) were evaluated fresh and after three and seven days of aging. Normal samples and samples with a moderate degree of myopathy showed greater water-holding capacity, which may benefit the processing industry of poultry meat. During the aging process, increase was observed in total collagen concentration (from 0.41% in normal samples to 0.56% in samples with severe degree). Samples of chicken breast affected by moderate degree showed higher myofibril fragmentation index (MFI = 115) than normal chicken samples (95.65). Although chicken samples affected with severe degree of wooden breast myopathy are more tender than normal chicken breasts, they produce more exudate, which can be detrimental to the processing of poultry meat. The aging process may improve the reduction of cooking weight loss and protein loss in exudation of broilers’ breasts affected by wooden breast myopathy.