Abstract: This study aimed to examine the characteristics of lipid oxidation during sauced duck processing. Low-temperature air drying was introduced to the processing of traditional sauced duck. Changes in pH, phospholipids, free fatty acid (FFA), peroxide values (POV), thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and total volatile base nitrogen (TVB-N) values were investigated during processing. The results showed that the pH value of raw duck meat increased from 5.81 to 6.09 after sterilization. Analysis of the intramuscular phospholipid composition indicated that C16:0/C20:4, C16:0/C18:1, C16:0/C22:5, C16:0/C22:4 and C16:0/C22:6 were the primary phosphatidylethanolamines (PE). Both POV and TBARS values increased firstly and then decreased. TVB-N values significantly decreased during salting, marination and sterilization, but increased during air-drying significantly (P < 0.05). Total FFA showed a significantly positive correlation with monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) (R = 0.92, P < 0.01), and we also found a significantly positive correlation between PUFA and pH values (R = 0.90, P < 0.01), between PUFA and TBARS values (R = 0.80, P < 0.01), between TBARS and POV (R = 0.89, P < 0.01), and between POV and TVB-N values (R = 0.81, P < 0.01), but phosphatidylcholine (PC) was significantly negatively correlated with PE (R = ?1.00, P < 0.01). These results may provide a theoretical basis for understanding the mechanism of lipid oxidation during the processing of low-temperature air-dried sauced duck.

Key words: low-temperature air-drying, sauced duck, free fatty acid (FFA), phospholipid, lipid oxidation