Abstract: The changes of meat quality characteristics of goose breast muscle after vacuum tumbling were investigated. Results showed that the pH value was increased significantly, while the L* value, a* value, cooking loss, pressing loss and muscle fiber diameter was decreased significantly; the sarcomere length showed an extremely significant increase, and the share force and the denatured temperature of three proteins measured by DSC were decreased extremely significantly. An extremely significant decrease in the muscle fiber diameter and a highly significant increase in the sarcomere length were observed. The values of b* was changed insignificantly. Fitting of the NMR data resulted in 3 water fractions, namely bound water, immobilized water and free water with respective transverse relaxation times of T2b, T21 and T22. After the tumbling, T23 disappeared, while T21 and T22 were increased significantly. The correlations among all the investigated indexes were significant or extremely significant. Hence, tumbling process can improve the quality of goose meat.

Key words: vacuum tumbling, goose meat, DSC, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)