Meat Quality Improvement and Heritability Of Body Weight and Chemical Composition of Breast Meat in Japanese Quail (Cotunix coturnix japonica)

Abstract

The study was conducted to investigate the effect of sex, age, generation on meat quality of 752 Japanese quail. 2 Determined also were realized h of body weight, body length and chemical compositions of the birds. Data obtained were subjected to analyses of variance and realized heritability calculated as appropriate for the following: To quantify changes in breast meat quality with respect to age and sex, body measurements with 2 respect to sex, age and generations selected and to determine the realized h of body dimension, body weight and chemical composition in Japanese quail. The result shows that the sex of birds were affected by pH20mins, pH24hr Cooking loss, colour(P and pectoral major water holding capacity and lightness colour (P The advanced in age significantly affects the pH20mins, pectoral major water holding capacity, cooking loss breast muscles, lightness, redness, yellowness, chroma, hue and driploss, pectoral major water absorbing capacity Age, sex and generation significantly affect body length and some economic traits and sex of the birds except 2 pelvic circumference and breast length in sex of Japanese quail. The realized h for body weight at day 56, breast 2 length and body length at day 35 ranges from moderate to high (0.24 – 0.71). The realized h for chemical composition of the Japanese quail are low NFE (0.01), ash (0.04). The possibility depends on the genetic variability 2 of body weight and body composition. The low, moderate to high realized h is an indication that the traits are 2 2 affected by additive genetic effects in the case of low h and also for moderate to high h the traits are affected by non additive genetic effects and environmental factors.