MEAT TENDER ANALYSIS BY RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY

CORIA, M. SUMAMPA; CASTAÑO LEDESMA, MARÍA SOFÍA; GRIGIONI, GABRIELA; PALMA, GUSTAVO A.; BORSARELLI, CLAUDIO D.

Virtual

Jornada; XXIII JORNADAS ANUALES DE LA SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE BIOLOGÍA; 2021

Sociedad Argentina de Biología

The aim of the present work was to evaluate the physical properties of beef tenderness in Braford bovine steers raised in the northwestern region of Argentina using Raman spectroscopy to determine if this technique could be applied as a fast and accurate tool for evaluating meat quality. Thirty samples of the longissimus thoracis et lumborum muscle were analyzed. The hardness of the samples was determined by the texture profile analysis, dividing them into groups: (G1) meat with lower hardness values (“tender”) and (G2) meat with higher hardness values (“hard”). Other meat quality parameters were evaluated such as cohesiveness, chewiness, water holding capacity (WHC), intramuscular fat content (IMF); as well as structural parameters by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) such as fiber diameter and sarcomere length. Raman spectroscopy analysis was performed using a 785 nm laser as excitation source to avoid intrinsic fluorescence signals from tissues. No differences were observed in chewiness and fiber diameter between both groups of samples, although higher values of cohesiveness and lower values of WHC, IMF, and sarcomere length were obtained for the G1 samples than for the G2 group. The comparison of Raman measurements together with the principal component analysis (PCA) allowed to differentiate the tender and tough meat samples. The correlation between the sensory attributes obtained from the Raman spectra and the physical measurements resulted in values of R2 = 0.698 for hardness, 0.035 for IMF, 0.006 for WHC, 0.032 for chewiness, and 0.076 for cohesiveness. The high value of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r = 0.84) of hardness parameter with the Raman signal at 1003 cm−1 assigned to the symmetric vibration frequency of the phenylalanine ring, suggests that the content of this amino acid explains the differences between groups of samples, and allows us to conclude that Raman spectroscopy is an adequate and precise technique to identify Braford beef samples with differential tenderness attributes.