Characterizing the spatial distribution of woody breast condition in broiler breast fillet by compression force measurement

Authors: Parajuli, Pratik; Yoon, Seung-Chul; Zhuang, Hong; Bowker, Brian

Submitted to: Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/13/2023
Publication Date: 12/28/2023
Citation: Parajuli, P., Yoon, S.C., Zhuang, H., Bowker, B.C. 2023. Characterizing the spatial distribution of woody breast condition in broiler breast fillet by compression force measurement. Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11694-023-02330-8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11694-023-02330-8

Interpretive Summary: The woody breast (WB) condition, a muscle abnormality in chicken breast meat, has had significant negative impacts on the global poultry industry. The presence of the WB condition in poultry meat results in a hardened tissue texture when touched. Typically, subjective WB scoring using hand palpation is the gold standard widely adopted by the poultry science community when measuring and analyzing physical characteristics of WB fillets such as compression force (CF). However, while the heterogeneous distribution of WB is well-known, there is a lack of data on its spatial distribution according to the degree of hardened tissue. Previous studies have only examined a limited number of test locations using CF as an indicator to characterize the entire chicken meat. Therefore, to characterize the tactile properties of WB in a broiler breast fillet, a grid point pattern on top of a chicken breast fillet was overlayed and the change in CF was compared between three different point diameters with two different instrument types. The results indicate that spatial resolution for the heterogeneous distribution of WB can be better showcased using a smaller diameter, although a larger diameter successfully distinguishes normal from severe WB fillets. This may allow for quicker data collection/interpretation due to the smaller number of data points. Furthermore, the heatmap generated showed the prevalence of WB to occur in the cranial region more than the middle or caudal regions. However, there was an increasing trend of WB among all regions with increasing WB severity. Data from this study may allow for better WB distribution characterization for studies using CF techniques, as well as, using nondestructive tactile tools to distinguish the levels of WB severity.

Technical Abstract: Due to the significant economic impact, accurate, objective, and rapid distinction of varying severity of woody breast (WB) myopathy remains an ongoing concern within the poultry industry. WB myopathy is characterized by abnormal tissue hardness and rigidity in the Pectoralis major muscle (breast fillets) of broilers, which is distributed heterogeneously in its location and depth throughout the fillet. Past studies have focused on a small number of testing locations at the cranial region, failing to represent the WB myopathy's heterogeneous distribution throughout the fillet. To tackle this issue, our investigation focused on analyzing the spatial distribution of WB myopathy on the entire breast fillets using compression force (CF) measurements using different probe sizes and instrument types for varying severities of WB. The study found that severe WB fillets consistently exhibited significantly higher CF compared to normal fillets, as indicated by both devices and probe sizes. The distribution of WB tended to favor the cranial region among each WB severity. The cranial and middle regions showed an increasing trend for the percentage of WB distribution. In conclusion, the study findings indicated that a smaller probe size enabled better visualization of the distribution of WB. However, larger probe size offered the advantage of covering the same contact area with fewer number of points thus reducing data collection and analysis time. Also, the cranial region provided more occurrences of WB myopathy, which could be an important aspect to consider when the ability to effectively distinguish the severity of WB is important.