Intramuscular Fatty Acid Composition in Hyla Rabbit: Changes with Age, Gender and Muscle Type
XUE Shan
Engineering Research Center of Fujian Province for Fungal Industry, College of Biological Science and Technology, Minnan Normal University, Zhangzhou 363000, China
Abstract：This paper examined the changes in intramuscular fatty acid composition in Hyla rabbit with age, gender and muscle type in order to understand the deposition pattern of fatty acids and nutritional value of Hyla rabbit during the growth period. The results showed that the total intramuscular lipid content of longissimus dorsi (LD), left-hind leg muscle (LL) and abdominal muscle (AM) were significantly increased with age for both male and female Hyla rabbits (P < 0.05). Besides, AM showed the highest content of intramuscular lipids, followed by LL and LD, and the intramuscular lipid content of three muscles were overall higher in female than in male rabbits. By gas chromatography (GC) analysis, 21 intramuscular fatty acids were identified. Among them, unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) were found to be predominant, especially long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (C20-22 PUFA). PUFA/SFA ratio and the percentage of n-6 PUFA and n-3 PUFA decreased significantly (P < 0.05) with age for all three muscles. In addition, n-6/n-3 PUFA ratio changed differently with age, gender and muscle type, varying from 6.5 to 8.5. Partial least squares regression analysis showed that all three factors significantly affected the composition of intramuscular fatty acid. LL muscles from juvenile male rabbits had better fatty acid composition, whereas LD muscles from adult female rabbits were more suitable for processing.
2018, Vol. 32 
