Czech J. Food Sci., 2010, 28(3):161-167 | DOI: 10.17221/49/2008-CJFS

Quality of rabbit meat and phyto-additives

Monika Pogány Simonová¹, Ľubica Chrastinová², Jozef Mojto², Andrea Lauková¹, Renáta Szabóová¹, Ján Rafay²

¹ Institute of Animal Physiology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Košice, Slovak Republic

² Slovak Agricultural Research Center, Nitra, Slovak Republic

The consumption of healthy and nutritive food (rich in proteins and low in cholesterol and lipid contents) is a preferred factor with the contemporary consumers. In addition, natural alternatives are requested to replace the additives used up to now but recently banned. To reach the above given condition, phyto-additives represent a good alternative. The aim of this study was to examine the physicochemical properties and amino acid composition of rabbit meat after the enrichment of rabbit diet with oregano, sage, and Eleutherococcus senticosus extracts, and to make a comparison with the commercial product XTRACT and control samples (without plant extracts). The addition of oregano and sage extracts as well as El. senticosus in the rabbit diet positively influenced the physicochemical properties of rabbit meat by increasing its energy value (P < 0.05 - sage). Supplementing rabbits feed with oregano and sage extracts led to an improvement on the amino acid composition (P < 0.01; P < 0.001 - serine). These findings are also supported by the good health state of rabbits. Outgoing from these results, the diet enriched with the plant extracts is beneficial for the health state of rabbits involving the nutritional quality of rabbit meat in connection with consumers.

Keywords: amino acids; Eleutherococcus senticosus; oregano; rabbit meat; sage

Published: June 30, 2010  Show citation