A study on correlation coefficients between fatty acids in the meat of chickens fed fatty acids (PUFAs) rich diets

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study variations in the concentrations of fatty acids and the ratio between n-6 and n-3 fatty acid concentrations in chicken meat fed diet containing fish oil (n-3 rich), soybean oil (n-6 rich) or palm oil. The main fatty acids in broiler breast and thigh tissues were oleic acid, palmitic acid, linoleic acid and stearic acid. The birds fed the experimental diets containing 7% fish oil had a much lower and more favorable ratio between total n-6 and n-3 fatty acids; being about 0.6:1 and 0.9:1, and the ratio between amino acid (AA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) was about 0.06:1 and 0.07:1 in breast and thigh muscles, respectively. The broiler meat in the present study could be a healthful element of the human diet. The concentration of the dominant fatty acid in broiler breast muscle, oleic acid was strongly and positively correlated to those of C12:0, C14:0, C16:0 and C16:1. In thigh tissue, these correlation coefficients were highly stronger as compared to the breast muscle. EPA and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) correlates negatively to the C20:0, C22:0 and C24:0 fatty acids. This suggests that these long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) might inhibit elongation.

Key words: Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), meat fatty acids, correlation coefficients, broiler chickens.