Research findings in the US indicate that the use of imaging technologies will allow the problematic wooden breast (WB) condition in broiler breast fillets to be identified with up to 95% accuracy.
Although further research is needed on the issue, the findings have been published by the US Poultry & Egg Association (USPOULTRY) as a significant advance in the industry’s effort to overcome WB, which has become an increasing poultry meat quality problem in the US.
The research was carried out by a US Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) team led by Dr Brian Bowker. They examined the effectiveness of using multiple imaging technologies to differentiate normal breast fillets from affected breast fillets, achieving promising results with both Vis-NIR hyperspectral imaging and 3D imaging.
“Further research is needed to determine if fusing these imaging-based technologies would provide additional benefits in regards to sample throughput and accurately segregating the differing degrees of WB severity,” said USPOULTRY.
“The results of this feasibility study strongly suggest that with further development, imaging-based technologies can potentially be utilised to rapidly and non-destructively detect the WB condition in breast meat in an online setting.
“The development of such imaging technologies for detecting the WB condition would allow processors to more easily and accurately segregate product based on quality and uniformity.”
