Evaluation of Modified Atmospheric Packaged Chicken Breast Meat during Refrigeration Storage.

Modified atmospheric packaging (MAP) is most commonly used nowadays to improve the shelf-life of meat in refrigeration storage. Therefore, this research was undertaken to study the effect of MAP on the quality and shelf-life of chicken breast meat (CBM) under refrigeration storage. This was further compared with aerobic packaging (AP) to find the efficiency of MAP. Three different concentrations used were : 1) MAP-20 (20%O2+30%CO2+50%N2), 2) MAP-10 (10%O2+40%CO2+50%N2), and 3) MAP-0 (0%O2+20%CO2+80%N2). Refrigerated storage of CBM with MAP of 0-20% oxygen significantly (p<0.05) decreased the TBARS, deoxymyoglobin, metmyoglobin, L* value, b* value, oxygen, and nitrogen but increased the pH, oxymyoglobin, total meat pigment, a* value, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, standard plate counts and scores of sensory attributes when compared with aerobic packaging. It can be concluded that a MAPCBM had a shelf-life of 12 days and AP-CBM had 6 days under refrigeration storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]