Post harvest technologies to deal with poultry meat toughness, with reference to spent birds

Abstract

Meat colour and tenderness are considered as two of the most important quality attributes influencing consumer's purchasing and repurchasing decisions respectively. This review discusses the importance of poultry meat quality with reference to texture/tenderness. The manuscript includes different factors affecting poultry meat texture, methods for improving tenderness, ultra structural changes, and comparison of up-to-date tenderisation methodologies available in the literature are discussed. The tenderising efficacy, advantages and disadvantages of various physical, chemical, enzymatic characteristics and their synergistic effects in poultry meat is narrated. This review provides comprehensive information for poultry processors, retailers and consumers and gives an overall view to researchers.

Keywords::

• poultry meat
• tenderness
• meat texture
• shear force
• tenderisation methods
• palatability