• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.309-314
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• 2003

Color and its stability in venison, longissumus dorsi (LD) and quadriceps femoris (QF) muscles, from 8 wild Cervus nippon yesoensis (Japanese Yeso Deer) were investigated by means of the CIE L$^{*}a{*}b{*}$ measurement and autoxidation rate recorded using partially purified myoglobin. It was observed a common feature of the change of three mean values($L^{*}$, $a^{*}$ and $b^{*}$) in both LD and QF that mean value increased at 1 or 2 day post-mortem and then decreased during storage. The differences between 1 and 7 days was the largest in $a^{*}$ value than those in $L^{*}$ and $b^{*}$ values. The mean differences among storage days were only significant in $a^{*}$ except for $b^{*}$ of LD. It was same tendency that the mean difference of CIE $L^{*}$, $a^{*}$ and $b^{*}$ values during refrigerator storage was larger in $a^{*}$ than both in $L^{*}$ and $b^{*}$ reported in beef(Sekikawa et al., 1995) and venison(Stevenson et al., 1989) during storage. The smaller $a^{*}$ value was indicated that bright red of meat changed to dull red, brown red causing met-Mb formation. To compare of color stability with respects to the Mb autoxidation rate, we measured this rate of deer and horse muscles, because horse Mb was considered to have the fastest autoxidation rate among domestic animals, and we used crude Mb and pH 6.0, which might be reflected to the intact meat. Mean value of the autoxidation rate measured in this study in deer was 0.037 and that was 0.026 in horse(sigma). Although there was no significant mean difference and were different Mb purity between deer(A409/A 280 nm = 4.0) and horse(5.6), in generally Mb purity was the higher and the faster autoxidation rate, but this rate in deer was faster than in horse. These results might indicate that venison meat discolors at faster rate compared with beef.