Abstract
The New Zealand abalone industry relies mostly on the export of processed products to distant Asian markets, notably China. Over the past five years, live export of high quality abalone from New Zealand has proven successful. However, transport of live animals is associated with multiple stressors that affect survival and meat quality at the end of the transport phase. Better understanding of transport-derived stress is needed to improve transport conditions and recovery at destination to ensure high product quality and safety throughout the supply chain. To this end, we applied an untargeted GC–MS-based metabolomics approach to examine the changes in metabolite profiles of abalone after a 2-day transport event and subsequent water re-immersion for 2 days. The results revealed alterations of many metabolites in the haemolymph and muscle of post-transported abalone. Decreased concentrations of many amino acids suggest high energy demands for metabolism and stress responses of transported abalone, while increases of other amino acids may indicate active osmoregulation and/or protein degradation due to oxidative stress and apoptosis. The accumulation of citric acid cycle intermediates and anaerobic end-products are suggestive of hypoxia stress and a shift from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism (resulting from aerial exposure). Interestingly, some features in the metabolite profile of reimmersed abalone resembled those of pre-transported individuals, suggesting progressive recovery after reimmersion in water. Evidence of recovery was observed in the reduction of some stress biomarkers (e.g., lactic acid, succinic acid) following reimmersion. This study revealed insights into the metabolic responses to transport stress in abalone and highlights the importance of reimmersion practices in the supply chain of live animal exports.
Highlights
There are approximately 14 abalone species currently harvested from the wild or produced through aquaculture for human consumption [1,2,3,4]
New Zealand is an important abalone producer with 730 mt in 2018, mostly from one species (Haliotis Iris Gmelin, 1791), of which 87% comes from fisheries and the remaining quantity comes from a growing aquaculture industry (MPI, 2019)
We report for the first time the use of a GC–MS-based metabolomics approach to assess the effects of live transport on the metabolism of abalone and the metabolic changes of these animals when re-immersed in water
Summary
There are approximately 14 abalone species currently harvested from the wild or produced through aquaculture for human consumption [1,2,3,4]. New Zealand is an important abalone producer with 730 mt in 2018, mostly from one species (Haliotis Iris Gmelin, 1791), of which 87% comes from fisheries and the remaining quantity comes from a growing aquaculture industry (MPI, 2019). New Zealand exported 145 mt of abalone products valued at 7.7 million NZD in 2020 [5]. New Zealand abalone are sold as live, fresh or chilled, frozen, processed and preserved products [5], with live exports (packed in cooled polystyrene boxes without water) accounting for 43% of total exports [5]. Animals are often held in seawater post-harvest for up to three weeks before transport and re-immersed in seawater upon arrival at the destination and before distribution to local markets
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