Nandy Espino
1
;
Ana Vodanovich
2
;
Cecilia Carballo
3
;
María Cristina Cabrera
4
;
Ali Saadoun
5
1 - Facultad de Agronomía, Udelar. ORCID 0000- 0000-0002-0715-9423.
2 - Facultad de Agronomía, Udelar. ORCID 0000- 0000-0003-3954-6337.
3 - Facultad de Agronomía, Udelar. ORCID 0000-0002-5958-785X.
4 - Facultad de Agronomía, Udelar / Facultad de Ciencias, Udelar. ORCID 0000-002-7964-6669.
5 - Facultad de Agronomía, Udelar / Facultad de Ciencias, Udelar. ORCID 0000-0003-2251-6748.
Abstract:
The inclusion of flavonoids in animal diets improves antioxidant and immune status, production parameters and the quality of their products (Tella et al., 2023; Kumar et al., 2022). Onion peel (OP) has been characterized as an important source of flavonoids (Espino et al., 2023). On the other hand, meat birds have a very short but intense production cycle and are susceptible to stress situations that may affect their health, performance and subsequent product quality (Surai, 2020); in this sense, the beneficial properties of the flavonoids present in OP could be exploited and transferred to the poultry production process. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study the effect of flavonoids from onion peel (
Allium cepa L.), produced in the country, incorporated in the diet of meat poultry on meat quality parameters (pH, drip loss, colour). Ninety-six male broilers (Ross 308) raised on rice husks in an environment with controlled humidity, temperature and light at the Poultry Experimental Unit of the Faculty of Agronomy were used. At 21 days of age, 4 groups were established (8 cages x 3 birds; n=24/treatment). Treatments: C. Maize-soybean based diet; T1. Control + 1 % OP; T2. Control + 2 % OP; T3. Control + 4 % OP. After 43 days, the animals were sacrificed, the
pectoralis (PM),
ileotibialis (ITL) and
gastrocnemius (GN) muscles were removed and fresh measurements were taken. The pH was determined with a penetration pH meter (ORUS), water loss (drip loss, Honikel 1998) and colour L*, a*, b*, hue and chroma (CieLab, 1976, Minolta CR-10 colorimeter). Analysis of variance GLM with fixed effects of diet and muscle type, post hoc Tukey-Kramer test with p<0.05. Diet do not affected pH, only differences between muscles (p<0.0001): GN (6.39)>ITL (6.22)>PM (6.01) were observed. Water loss was reduced by the OP inclusion and that was significant for diet (p=0.002), being lower in T3 compared to T2 and C, 2.47, 3.35 and 3.50 % water loss respectively, a feature of great importance for the meat industry Sałek et al., (2020). For colour, a* was slightly lower with diet, where C (-0.19)>T2 (-0.62)>T3 (-1.059). In conclusion, OP inclusion impact positively in water loss reduction with an impact to industrial level without effect on pH. Only a slight effect on redness due probably to polyphenol content of OP as found by others (Wu et al., 2022). An inclusion of OP up to 4 % in broiler diets in the finishing phase is advisable to improve meat quality by reducing water loss.
