Determination of the Effect of Coconut Shell Extracted Carbon Monoxide on the Quality of Frozen Yellow Fin Tuna (Thunnus albacares) Products
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Date
2013
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Seafood provides the world's prime source of high-quality protein to the consumers and
processed frozen and fresh fish products account for major portion of the diets. Prolonged shelf
life and fine quality give the advantages to the frozen fish products in the market and bright red
color is used as an indicator of high quality in yellow fin tuna (Thunnus albacares). Carbon
monoxide (CO) either alone or as part of a filtered process, is being applied to seafood to
maintain the desirable color attributes. CO complexes with the heme-iron of myoglobin, forms a
stable red pigment, carboxymyoglobin. The heme-proteins are strong catalysts of lipid oxidation
in muscles and reduced heme-protein may suppress the lipid oxidation and other off odour and
flavour production (Faustman et al., 1989). CO or filtered smoke is capable of retarding the
microbial growth of the muscle (Kristinsson et al., 2008). In Sri Lankan context, coconut shells
can be used for processing of filtered smoke with CO. The present study evaluates the effect of
coconut shell extracted filtered smoke, a low cost source of CO on the chemical, physical,
microbiological and sensory quality attributes of yellow fin tuna (Thunnus albacares).
Methodology
The study was carried out in a specially designed experimental laboratory of the Global Sea
Foods (Pvt) Ltd. Imported grade “A” frozen yellow fin tuna (Thunnus albacares) from 57 Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) area caught by long lines was used
for the study. Average thickness and weight of the processed steaks for the experiment were
respectively 22±1.2 mm and 170±6 g. CO was extracted from coconut shells following the
Kowalski and William (1999) (United States Patent 5972401) process of making super purified
smoke using organic material. CO free, 15%, 30%, 45%, 60% and 75% CO concentrations were
used as treatments and CO injected steaks were stored under 4 ˚C for 48 hours and subsequently
individually vacuum packed. Complete randomized design (CRD) was adopted for the
experiment. Random number table (SLS, 428) was adopted to select the steaks for treatment in
five replicates.
Treated steaks were stored under -18 ˚C for 2 days and frozen steaks were subjected to analysis
for chemical, physical, microbiological and sensory attributes. 15 trained panelists were used for
sensory analysis and standards and criteria that were developed by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Department of Commerce (USDC/NOAA) seafood
analysts were adopted.
All results were reported as means and the significance of the differences were determined by
one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by tukey’s tests for the comparison of data
with 5% level of significance. Minitab 16 statistical software and Microsoft Excel 2010
(Microsoft Corp) were used for the statistical analysis.
Results and Discussion
Chemical, physical, microbiological and sensory quality attributes were analyzed to determine
the effect of coconut shell extracted CO on the quality of frozen Yellow fin tuna products.
Result showed that there was no significant difference among the histamine level of different
CO concentration treated frozen steaks (p>0.05) indicating that decomposition of histidine in to
histamine was not affected by the treatment of coconut shell extracted CO smoke.
Description
Keywords
Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries, Fish, fish Industry, Seafood, Food Science