Investigating Depth Profiles from Porcine Adipose Tissue by HR MAS NMR Spectroscopy

Abstract

One of the important quality parameters in porcine carcass grading for determining farmer payment and carcass sorting before splitting and cutting is the quality of the fat in the porcine carcass. Therefore, it is of supreme importance to obtain detailed knowledge about the chemical composition of the fat layers. In this study, we have investigated the potential of using high resolution magic angle spinning (HR MAS) NMR to investigate the depth profiles of porcine adipose fat tissue, with the purpose of estimating the variation in fatty acid composition as a function of feeding scheme and of fat layer. The measured spectra resulted in well separated profiles of the fat layers, and the signals associated with the double bonds in the fatty acids present, was used to study the total degree of unsaturation. The standard method for determining the fat quality is obtaining of the iodine value (IV), which measures the degree of unsaturation through the total number of double bonds in the fatty acids. For the possible prediction of the IV in porcine fat by HR MAS NMR spectroscopy using partial least squares regression, the iodine values measured in related studies was used.