Abstract
Camel minced meat is widely used in the world especially they were used to produce lowcost protein when compared with other animals. Therefore, the current study aimed to assess the effects of chitosan, rosemary essential oils, and sodium lactate on the organoleptic, chemical, and bacteriological quality of camel minced meat during refrigerated storage at 4 degrees C. Twenty kg of camel meat (round meat) were obtained 24 hours after slaughter. The meat was minced and classified into four groups; untreated control and three treated groups (0.2% rosemary oil, 2% sodium lactate and 1% chitosan), which was kept under chilling conditions at 3 +/- 1 degrees C and examined at different storage periods (zero-time, 3rd, 5th and 7th days of storage). The organoleptic, chemical, and bacteriological quality of minced meat was assessed. The surface discoloration was noticed on the 3rd day of the control group, but all treated groups retained their normal color especially 1% chitosan group, which maintained the highest value of redness. The sodium lactate group at 7th day of storage had pH, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N mg/100 g) and thiobarbituric acid (TBA mg/kg) of 6.13, 14.3 and 1.08, respectively, while they were 6.37, 16.4 and 0.82 of rosemary group and 6.29, 15.64 and 0.72 of chitosan group, respectively. Spermine, spermidine, putrescine and tyramine were detected without significant differences in all examined groups but cadaverine and tryptamine were significantly low in all groups when comparing with the control group. Sodium lactate exhibits a great effect against bacterial growth on the 7th day of chilling by minimizing the bacterial load to be 5.95, 3.44 and 3.21 log(10) CFU/g for psychrotrophic, Enterobacteriaceae and pseudomonas, respectively with original counts of 6.98, 4.51, and 4.29 log(10) CFU/ g, respectively. The current study concluded that the quality of camel minced meat could be enhanced by adding rosemary, sodium lactate, and chitosan, but sodium lactate was the best in controlling bacterial proliferation and biogenic amine formation.