Abstract:
In order to investigate the moisture changes of pork with different water holding capacity during aging, a total of thirty Duroc×Large White×Landrace pigs were used in this study by using low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) , and transverse relaxation time and water propotion of different phase water were analysed.In the present investigation, three peaks were identified in pork during aging through the multi-exponential fitting of the bulk NMR T
2transverse relaxation time data.The peaks were directly related to three water components T
21 (2.127~2.541 ms) , T
22 (31.248~48.817 ms) and T
23 (167.086~275.782 ms) .Compared with low WHC group, T
22, T
23and P
23decreased significantly in high WHC group, while P
22increased dramatically, T
21and P
21was not significantly different from the three groups.During postmortem aging, the general trend of T
22and T
23increased firstly and declining, and reached the highest value at 8 h postmortem, the water molecules mobility of immobilized water and free water had the same trend, while T
21changed little.The proportion of free water P
22increased initially and then decreased during aging, while the opposite trend was detected for the proportion of free water P
23.The NMR images showed that the brightness of pork increased during aging.The results was of important significance to study the moisture changes of pork during postmortem aging, and it could provide theoretical basis for explain the mechanism of water holding capacity of meat.