Toward the prediction of PSE-like muscle defect in hams: Using chemometrics for the spectral fingerprinting of plasma

PSE-like muscle defect is of great importance in the cooked ham industry because of the economic losses it can cause. Although this muscle defect has been widely studied from a mechanistic angle, there is a lack of reliable and practical markers. This study proposes the use of chemometrics for the spectral fingerprinting of pig plasma to predict the PSE-like muscle defect in cooked hams. Both MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy were used to obtain protein and chemical function fingerprints. Though the two approaches showed very good predictive capacity, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry was found to be better suited to predicting normal hams, i.e. hams without the defect; while ATR-FTIR spectroscopy was found to be better suited to predicting the PSE-like muscle defect. These results demonstrated the feasibility of predicting the PSE-like defect using spectral fingerprinting and chemometrics approaches.