The influence of the temperature and of the freezing time on broiler chicken meat color

Since meat color represents an important component in evaluating the aspect of food products, the studies from poultry field about efficient methods of storage on long term of the chicken carcasses approaches continuous finding/optimizing of some solutions about avoiding the negative consequences owed to oxidation, that include the color loss and/or its modification. The study goal was consisting in evaluation of the three different storage procedures by temperature and time (L1= -14°C, 30 days; L2= -16°C, 60 days; L3= -18°C, 90 days), on three cut anatomical regions (chest, upper and lower thigh), in order to characterize the broiler chicken meat color. The objective description of the chicken meat color frozen and defrozen was performed trough the CIE Lab Cartesian coordinate system. The luminosity of the studied cut anatomical regions ranged between an interval lower delimited by 47,27±1,184 units for lower thigh from L3 chicken group and upper by 53,35±1,142 units calculated for upper thigh collected from the carcasses of the same experimental group. Overall, the method of preservation determined a higher brightness to samples collected from L3 chicken group for chest and upper thigh muscles, respective L2 to lower thigh muscle of the counterparts from the other experimental group