Effects of supercritical carbon dioxide treatment for sterilization purpose on meat quality of porcine longissimus dorsi muscle

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO₂) treatment for the sterilization purpose on meat quality and protein denaturation of the porcine longissimus dorsi muscle. The conditions of SC-CO₂ treatment were 7.4 and 15.2 MPa at 31.1 °C for 10 min. SC-CO₂ treatment had no effect on muscle pH, tenderness, and water-holding capacity (WHC). However, the samples treated at 7.4 MPa had a higher lightness value (52.97 vs. 46.94, P<0.001) and a more pronounced extent of sarcoplasmic protein denaturation (73.80 vs. 80.73, P<0.01) than the control samples. These results suggest that the paler color of samples treated with SC-CO₂ was associated with the sarcoplasmic protein denaturation, and the major denaturated proteins were determined to be phosphorylase b (PH), creatine kinase (CK), triosephophate isomerase (TPI), and one unknown protein. On the other hand, other quality traits were generally unaffected by the SC-CO₂ treatments at 7.4 or 15.2 MPa.