PREDICTION OF THE TEXTURE OF COOKED POULTRY PECTORALIS MAJOR MUSCLES BY NEAR-INFRARED REFLECTANCE ANALYSIS OF RAW MEAT

Near‐infrared reflectance (NIR) spectra were collected on pectoralis major muscles from 90 broiler carcasses ( from 2 different processing sets) to assess the relationship between the NIR and a cutting‐shear instrumental texture test. For the instrumental razor blade test, two instrumental parameters (maximum shearing force and total shear energy) were calculated. Calibration (R²) and validation () coefficients of determination were obtained for predicting the instrumental measurements using the reflectance and its first and second derivatives. Models obtained with the second derivative were adequate when the two groups of samples were analyzed separately. The R² values ranged from 0.90 to 0.95 and from 0.84 to 0.89 for both maximum shear force and total shear energy. The regressions performed on the two sample sets combined did not yield model statistics that were as satisfactory (R² = 0.85–0.86 and = 0.78–0.77), suggesting that a prediction model accurately predicting poultry breast meat tenderness will need a larger and more varied sample set. The results suggest that NIR could be used to predict poultry meat texture and to classify muscles according to tenderness levels.