Application of Laser Spectrochemical Analytical Techniques to Follow Up Spoilage of White Meat in Chicken

The overall objective of this paper is to evaluate the potential of laser spectrochemical analytical techniques as rapid, cost-effective, and accurate techniques to detect the onset of spoilage in fresh chicken breast fillets in three consecutive days directly following slaughter day. Samples were periodically examined via laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF). In the case of LIBS, the cyanide (CN) and carbon (C-2) molecular spectral emission bands in the LIBS spectra of meat have been taken as indicators of protein content in the chicken breast samples. The ratio of ionic to atomic spectral lines of both magnesium and iron is found to be proportional to the chicken meat tenderness which decreases with storage time. LIF has been also exploited as a simple and fast technique for white meat spoilage detection. There was a clear inverse proportionality between the intensity of the samples' fluorescence band and the storage period. The obtained spectrochemical results have been validated by measuring the total proteins in the investigated samples using a conventional meat analyzer. This work demonstrates the feasibility of adopting LIBS and LIF techniques in characterization of both fresh and spoiled chicken meat samples.