Comparison of slaughter performance, meat traits, serum lipid parameters and fat tissue between Chaohu ducks with high- and low-intramuscular fat content

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of intramuscular fat (IMF) on carcass traits of Chaohu ducks. Two-hundred-forty ducks were separated by sex and raised in separate pens. Slaughter performance, meat quality, and serum lipid parameters were identified. Based on IMF, samples were divided into males with high IMF (CHM) or low IMF (CLM) and females with high IMF (CHF) or low IMF (CLF). There were significant differences in the living body weight, abdominal fat ratio (%), shear force, IMF, total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) content between female and male ducks. In addition, compared with the CLM group, the shear force (p = 0.001) was significantly greater but the lightness (p = 0.006) was lower in the CHM group. TC, HDL and LDL content were also significantly higher (p = 0.033, 0.027 and 0.012, respectively) in the CHM group. The butcher ratio (0.028), eviscerating rate (0.039) and breast meat ratio (0.028) in the CHF group was significantly lower than that in CLF group, while these parameters showed no difference between CHM and CLM. In conclusion, IMF had a significantly positive correlation with subcutaneous fat and abdominal fat and was also positively correlated with TC, HDL and LDL in Chaohu ducks.

Keywords:

• Duck
• carcass trait
• meat quality
• intramuscular fat
• serum lipid parameter

Ethical approval

All experimental procedures were performed in accordance with the guidelines developed by the China Council on Animal Care and Protocols and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, China, under permit No. ZXD-P20140809.

Author contributions

Kai Ge drafted the manuscript and prepared the figures and tables; Zhaoyu Geng, Xingyong Chen and Kai Ge conceived and designed the experiments; Kai Ge, Pengfei Ye, Jinlong Kuang and Lei Yang performed the experiments; Kai Ge and Pengfei Ye analysed the data; Jinlong Kuang and Lei Yang contributed reagents and materials. All authors approved the final draft of the manuscript submitted for review and publication.

Acknowledgments

We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for this research was granted by the National Science and Technology Support Plan Program of China [2015BAD03B06].