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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Stoneville, Mississippi » Warmwater Aquaculture Research Unit » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #305854

Title: Effect of salt treatments on survival and consumer acceptance of freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii

Author
item CIARAMELLA, M - Mississippi State University
item ALLEN, PETER - Mississippi State University
item JOSEPH, P - Mississippi State University
item D'ABRAMO, L - Mississippi State University
item SILVA, J - Mississippi State University
item KIM, T - Mississippi State University
item SCHILLING, M - Mississippi State University

Submitted to: Aquaculture
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/20/2014
Publication Date: 3/1/2014
Citation: Ciaramella, M.A., Allen, P.J., Joseph, P., D'Abramo, L.R., Silva, J.L., Kim, T., Schilling, M.W. 2014. Effect of salt treatments on survival and consumer acceptance of freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii. Aquaculture. 428:184-188.

Interpretive Summary: Freshwater prawns were examined for survival and consumer acceptance of several post-harvest salt treatments that would potentially increase the value of the prawns. Live treatments of different types of salts were compared, as well as post-mortem brining. Artificial marine salts had the highest survival of different salt mix types, but post-mortem brining had the highest consumer acceptance, lowest loss of post-harvest product, and simplest application. Therefore, post-mortem brining is recommended.

Technical Abstract: Post harvest acclimation of live freshwater prawns to a mixture of water and marine salt increases the consumer acceptability of the finished product. However, the high cost of marine salts prohibits their use in commercial practice. Therefore, the identification of successful, cost effective salt alternatives to replace acclimation with marine salt could potentially lead to an economically practical method to add value to prawns. This study was conducted to evaluate the consumer acceptability of freshwater prawns that were harvested and either held and acclimated with different salt treatments or marinated with salt. Post-harvest freshwater prawns were transferred to 250-l tanks containing one of five salt treatments (10 ppt): Instant Ocean (IO; marine salt), solar salt(SS-NaCl), solar salt supplemented with KCl and CaCl2 (SS+), freshwater (FW), and freshwater marinated postmortem (marinated). Salts were increased by increments of 5 ppt every 2 h until 30 ppt was achieved. Prawns were harvested after 18 h of salt acclimation. Survival was recorded and prawns were then chill killed, deheaded and frozen. Freshwater control samples were divided into non-marinated controls and samples that were marinated in 5% NaCl for 18 h at 2–3 °Cwith either shells on or off prior to freezing. Three consumer panels (n=60)were conducted to assess the acceptability of prawns on a 9-point hedonic scale. Survival was 67% in the SS treatment with the highest survival in the FW(95%) followed by IO (85%) and SS+(73%). Consumer acceptability studies indicated that prawns marinated post-mortem without the shell were more acceptable (P b 0.05) than those from other treatments with respect to flavor, texture and overall acceptability. In addition, prawns marinated in the shell and from all salt acclimation treatments were preferred (P b 0.05) over the freshwater prawns. Panelists were clustered into 5 consumer groups of which 94.2% of consumers rated the post-mortem marinated prawns without the shell as like slightly or greater. These data suggest that post-mortem marination or salt acclimation significantly improves the acceptability of the freshwater prawns. Live acclimation to salt enhances flavor due to significantly higher concentrations of glutamic acid in the tail muscle of prawns in comparison to that found in prawns from the FW and marinated treatments.