Relationships among Consumer Liking, Lipid and Volatile Compounds from New Zealand Commercial Lamb Loins

Abstract

Loin sections (m. Longissimus lumborum) were collected at slaughter from forty-eight lamb carcasses to evaluate consumer-liking scores of six types of typical New Zealand commercial lamb and to understand the possible underlying reasons for those ratings. A consumer panel (n = 160) evaluated tenderness, juiciness, flavor liking, and overall liking of the different types of lamb loins. Consumer scores differed among the types of lamb meat for all the evaluated attributes (p < 0.05). Further segmentation based on overall liking scores showed two consumer clusters with distinct ratings. Correlation and external preference map analyses indicated that one consumer cluster (n = 75) liked lamb types that had lower total lipid content, a lower proportion of branched-chain fatty acids, oleic and heptadecanoic acids; and a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids and volatile compounds (green and fruity descriptors). Consumer liking of the other segment (n = 85) was less influenced by fatty acids and volatiles, except hexanoic, heptanoic and octanoic acids (rancid, fatty, and sweaty descriptors). Thus, the fatty acid profile and the volatile compounds derived from their oxidation upon cooking seem to be a stronger driver of consumer liking of lamb for some consumers than others.

Effects of Dairy Lambs’ Rearing System and Slaughter Age on Consumer Liking of Lamb Meat and Its Association with Lipid Content and Composition

“…Therefore, the negative correlations between C17:0 and flavor or overall liking of meat in Cluster-1 but positive in Cluster-2, indicate a divergence in consumer preferences between clusters, with consumers in Cluster-1 preferring a milder sheep meat flavor than those in Cluster-2. Similar divergence in preferences for lamb meat between consumers was reported by Pavan, Ye, Eyres, Guerrero, Reis, Silcock, Johnson, and Realini [ 37 ]. The fact that the flavor liking from consumers in Cluster-1 was also negatively correlated with the PUFA C18:3 n -3, which is associated with the flavor of forage-fed animals [ 43 ], also suggests that these consumers would prefer lamb with a mild pasture flavor.…”

“…but correlations were not significant in Cluster-1. Previous studies have shown that not only the content but also the composition of IMF influence consumer liking scores [ 4 , 12 , 19 , 37 ]. SFA and MUFA proportions in this study were positively and PUFA proportions were negatively associated with flavor liking scores for consumers in Cluster-2 only.…”

Carcass Traits, Meat Quality, and Volatile Compounds of Lamb Meat from Different Restricted Grazing Time and Indoor Supplementary Feeding Systems

“…In its simplest form, dietary composition may affect the final flavor of lamb meat by direct transfer of specific plant-derived compounds into the meat or they may undergo degradation during thermal processing to form new flavor-active compounds [68]. Interestingly, the acceptability of meat flavor is not only decided by the content of volatile compounds, but also nonvolatile and other factors influence consumer's preference [76], which suggests the volatile flavor compounds evaluation should connect with a sensory test in future research to provide a more comprehensive assessment of meat flavor.…”

CT image segmentation of meat sheep Loin based on deep learning

“…Inspired by these studies, we combined deep learning with CT imaging to segment the CT image of sheep. In livestock and poultry breeding, Loin is widely used in breeding research for meat production or meat quality traits [15,16]. For CT data of meat sheep, Loin segmentation presents an extra challenge due to the absence of obvious boundaries of the region of interest.…”