The effect of dietary supplementation of thyme and garlic essential oils on meat quality, storage stability and sensory properties in commercial broilers

Some essential oils (EO), renowned for their all-natural and eco-friendly characteristics, improve the quality and storage stability of meat. An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of feeding thyme and garlic EOs to broilers, on meat quality and storage stability. The four treatments consisted of a control diet, a control diet supplemented with thyme essential oil (TEO) or garlic essential oil (GEO) at 25 g/100kg, and thyme and garlic essential oil (TGEO) at 50 g/100kg. The birds were fed with iso-nitrogenous and iso-caloric diets according to the recommendations for six weeks. Supplementation of the EOs individually and their combination in the broilers' diet improved the physiochemical properties, fatty acid profile, and storage stability of the meat, but did not show any effect on the proximate composition or texture profile of the meat, except hardness which decreased with supplementation of EOs. In meat color analysis, redness (a*) was higher in the GEO group than in other treatments, whereas lightness (L*) and yellowness (b*) were not affected. The sensory quality parameters for texture and juiciness of meat were improved with the supplementation of EO individually. Coliform count and psychrophilic bacterial count (PBC) were reduced in the TEO group, whereas the yeast and mold count (YMC) was low in the TEO and GEO groups. However, no effect on total plate count (TPC) with dietary treatments was found. On the basis of the study, it may be concluded that Thyme essential oil (TEO) or Garlic essential oil (GEO) supplementation at a dosage of 25 g/100kg in the broilers' diet improved the meat's quality and storage stability.