The effect of replacing soybean meal with Fava bean seeds in daily ration of Lebanese Baladi goat kids and Awassi sheep lambs: 2- Meat quality

The objective of this study was the physical characterization of the qualitative traits of meat acquired from different small ruminant species. Local Baladi goat male kids and Awassi male lambs fed basal commercial ration supplemented with different proportions of fava bean seeds (FBS) and soybean meal (SBM). Upon reaching about 7 months of age the experimental animals were slaughtered and samples of muscle tissue were collected to be analyzed. Definitely, meat samples were exposed to evaluations of the physical parameters, including pH, color, water retention and meat texture. Physical quality of meat did not differ much among groups. pH indicator after 7 days of freezing was more acidic for both types of meat. Nevertheless, goat meat was more consistent in being more acidic than mutton calibrating from 6.22 as in GC0 group to 6.29 in G25 (P>0.05). Moreover, if to compare meat obtained from animals fed 25% FBS in daily ration we notice less acidity than other groups attaining the levels of 6.37 and 6.29 in groups S25 and G25, respectively (P>0.05). It shows that after cooling results of L* are higher than those obtained after freezing in all animal-groups of both sheep and goats. Lighter in color meat L* on 0-100 scale was scored in groups consuming the highest proportion of SBM: GC0, SC0, G25 and S25s, where it attained the levels of 54.90, 54.54, 54.41 and 55.64, respectively. The highest redness (a*) of goat meat was achieved in GC0- animal group whose kids were fed rations with 100 % SBM attaining the level of 21.09 (P>0.05) in comparison with all other groups. Although redness in G100 was the lowest (7.75) before freezing, we notice that after freezing this indicator was the highest in this group (13.08) when compared with all experimental animal groups (P>0.05): GC0 (11.20), G75 (8.89), G50 (7.46) and G25 (6.89) in the results obtained for after freezing in animal group. Better results for redness (a*) were achieved in animal groups GC0 (100 % SBM) before freezing at 24 h post-mortem and SCO (100 % FBS) after 7 days of freezing in meat of goat and sheep as well, attaining 21.09, 20.75, 13.08 and 13.91, respectively (P>0.05). In comparing the data obtained yellowness (b*) between goat and sheep meat before and after freezing shows that the highest level of b* was achieved in goat meat in group G75 before (19.08) and after (16.31) freezing (P>0.05) and GC0 (11) after freezing (P<0.05). Even though yellowness before freezing was high in both species it was observed that this indicator decreases after freezing on much higher rates in mutton than goat meat (P>0.05). It is worthy to mention that SC0 and GC0 attained statistically significant (P<0.05) higher level of drip loss in meat water after 24 h of cooling in comparison with all animal groups except S25 and G25 where this decrease was insignificant (P>0.05). Thawing loss (%) in sheep was higher than that obtained in goat meat when comparing each two different animal groups fed with the same ingredients as in S25 and G25, S50 and G50, S75 and G75 and S100 and G100, SC0 and GC0 (P>0.05). The highest values (P>0.05) were in groups SC0 (12.21 %) and GC0 (10.93 %) and the lowest in S25 (7.22 %) and G25 (5.80 %). The least cooking losses in water was registered in S50, S25, S100, S75 and SC0 losing weight after cooking averaging to 26.18% Vs 11.09%, 27.54 Vs 11.96, 28.25 Vs 12.28, 32.47 Vs 14.27 and 33.15 Vs 13.09% in both conditions, 24 h Vs 7 days, respectively (P<0.05).