Suchergebnisse

Assessing consumers' acceptability of traditional pork products (TPP) from local pig breeds is essential to ensure sustainability of regional pork chains. As part of TREASURE project, expectations and hedonic perception of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) Noir de Bigorre (NB) dry-cured ham produced from pure Gascon breed were assessed. The study was conducted in Toulouse (France) as expanding market for TPP with 124 consumers, regular purchasers of TPP (quota sampling method). Three products were used, described as follows: 'NB-PDO drycured ham 24 months ripening – local pig breed in extensive system' (NB24), 'NB-PDO drycured ham 36 months ripening – local pig breed in extensive system' (NB36) as innovative TPP to enhance sensory quality, and 'Iberian ham – 50% Iberian pig' (IB) as competing product. Following the expectation disconfirmation theory, the sensory test included three phases: blind (tasting without information), expected (product description only: no tasting) and actual liking (tasting with information), assessed using a 9-point scale from 1: extremely dislike to 9: extremely like. Data were submitted to ANOVA (mixed model). Blind hedonic test showed no differences (P>0.05) between products that all displayed high liking score (6.7 to 6.8). Product description strongly influenced expected liking (P<0.001) with higher score for NB36 than NB24 (7.8 vs 7.2, P<0.05) and lowest score for IB (5.2). Hedonic test with information showed higher actual liking for NB36 and NB24, that were similar, than for IB (7.4 and 7.2 vs 5.9, P<0.001). Both NB hams displayed higher actual than blind liking (P<0.05), denoting positive effect of information on acceptability. Actual liking was similar to expected for NB24, indicating fulfilment of hedonic expectations. By contrast, actual liking was lower than blind for IB (P<0.05). Results will be completed with consumer preferences and willingness to pay for TPP and innovations in TPP. Funded by European Union's H2020 RIA program (grant agreement no. ...

Extensive farming systems produce for the society goods and services definable as public goods (biodiversity…), or having public good features (landscape attractiveness…). The provision of these public goods may not be guaranteed due to the lack of recognition of their values in markets and policies that ultimately can put in risk the future of these systems. Within TREASURE project, a choice experiment (CE) survey was applied to assess the social demand for relevant attributes of the Noir de Bigorre (NB) French regional pork chain producing Gascon local pig breed in extensive system with public good character. CE is an economic valuation method estimating the social demand for a given attribute or for combinations of them in management scenarios. Five relevant attributes of the NB chain and their current and potential levels in alternative management options were identified from focus groups: probability of existence of the breed in next 25 years, farm size, feedstuff origin, geographical availability of the products and type of selling places. A monetary attribute was included to assess the social demand for the previous attributes. A valuation questionnaire was administered to 418 individuals (365 through web-based survey, 53 face-to-face), half of them located in the South West of France, i.e. the production area of the NB chain. Results of the CE showed that the respondents had a distinctively urban profile, with no agricultural family background. Almost 40% of the respondents did not know or consume products from the NB chain. On average guaranteeing the survival of the breed achieved the highest willingness to pay (112.37 €/household/year). Respondents were willing to pay 42.35€ to maintain equal number of small and medium farms and 21.86€ to have feedstuff produced in the proximity of the farms. Geographical availability and selling places of products contributed to a lesser extent to shape their preferences. Funded by European Union's H2020 RIA program (grant agreement no. 634476).

TREASURE project aims to develop sustainable pork chains based on European local pig breeds. The Porc Negre Mallorquí (Majorcan Black Pig, MBP) is an untapped pig breed from Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands, included in the project due its high rusticity, adaptation to the environment and meat quality differentiation. Particularities of MBP are mostly unknown out from Mallorca, with only one representative meat product, the 'sobrassada de Mallorca de Porc Negre', a fatrich cured sausage owning a PGI trademark. Carcass, meat and fat quality of MBP was evaluated, according to a standardised toolbox of parameters. The toolbox aimed for a harmonised knowledge of untapped breeds, made from the contribution of researcher's expertise and the literature. The mean values and standard deviation for carcass traits (n=29) were: 156.8±11.8 kg for live weight, 125.3±12.9 kg for carcass weight, 75.1±3.2% for carcass dressing, 88.7±3.7 cm for carcass length and 55.2±10.1 mm for ZP fat. The most remarkable results for the meat quality parameters toolbox (n=58) were an ultimate pH of 5.58±0.12 and electrical conductivity of 6.99±3.44 mS, a lightness value (L*) of 44.10±3.59, a drip loss of 1.49±1.46%, a shear force of 3.46±1.07 kg, and an intramuscular fat (IMF) content of 6.11±3.09%. The maximum value of IMF was 19%, a hint of the wide variability within this untapped breed, representing a disadvantage for the product standardisation in case of fresh meat, but not for 'sobrassada', mainly made of grounded ham, shoulder and loin. The results for the major fatty acid (FA) groups in back fat (n=48) samples were 41.00±1.42% of saturated FA, 51.27±1.64% monounsaturated FA and 6.88±0.71% polyunsaturated FA. 'Sobrassada' includes 40-50% of back fat, thus the FA composition is critical for product quality. The FA composition, with a high proportion of MUFA and low of PUFA contributes to an optimal technological quality of MBP back fat. Funded by European Union's H2020 RIA program (grant agreement no. 634476).

Project's idea is a new paradigm of pig production systems and development of sustainable pork chains based on European local pig breeds which are held in less intensive systems, use locally available feeding resources and are adapted to local agro-climatic conditions. Local pig breeds provide products with typical, generally high sensory quality and regional identity searched by consumers. Despite revived interest, these breeds are mainly untapped and often remain endangered. The few successful examples in Europe demonstrate that the best conservation strategy is to ensure breed is self-sustaining resulting from good valorisation of pork products. As their productivity is low, local pork chains can become sustainable only when their genetic potential is benefited, production systems optimised and their products viable on the market. To enhance sustainability of pork chains based on local breeds, it is essential to gain scientific proofs of their genetic singularity, productive potential and product qualities, to develop genetic tools for authentication and breeding, to optimize pig nutrition and management (enhance welfare, use of local feeding resources), to evaluate their environmental impact, to assess consumers' attitudes, acceptability and purchase intentions, and to develop adapted marketing strategies. In addition, project promotes knowledge exchange and building of functional networks among regions esp. by means of creating an 'umbrella' trade mark as exploitation booster. These challenges are addressed by the project and will be presented. Funded by European Union's H2020 RIA program (grant agreement no. 634476).

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 634476

In order to further allow implementation of breeding programs in local pig breeds, with selection objectives defined for each local breed, we aimed at developing a standardised recording of carcass and meat quality traits. These data have to be connected with herdbooks to estimate genetic parameters of the traits (heritabilities and genetic correlations) which are necessary to define breeding objectives. Today the situation is very different from one local breed to another. No or very few phenotypes are recorded in some of them, while breeding programs already exist for a few breeds. To promote phenotyping, a dedicated database and a website were developed in the frame of the TREASURE project. First, the required variables have been collected for six local breeds: Basque (FR), Bísaro (PT), Crna slavonska (HR), Gascon (FR), Krškopoljski (SI) and Schwäbisch-Hällisches (DE). In total 74 variables have been identified dealing with animal herdbook information (10), rearing and growth (22), carcass (22) and meat quality (20) attributes. The database is compatible with the various identifiers used in the different countries: animal IDs, breed, farm… codifications. Major attention has been paid to the description of measurement methods of traits. Thus, each carcass and meat quality phenotype is associated to a method description representing 35 additional variables. The website can be easily translated into several languages. The website and database are currently on test until the end of the TREASURE project. All the breeds studied in TREASURE are free to use these tools. The database can be duplicated so that each partner can host its own data. Funded by European Union H2020 RIA program (grant agreement no. 634476).

The study of gut microbiota and its effects on hosts has emerged as an essential component of host homeostasis and global efficiency. Besides host's influence on gut microbiota, major quantitative and qualitative changes may occur in the composition of the intestinal microbiota due to the influence of diet and other environmental factors. In accordance with the TREASURE project global aim of enhancing sustainability of production systems for local pig breeds, the objective of our task was to conduct a pilot characterisation of intestinal microbiota in order to test its usefulness to characterize several local European pig populations and their production systems. This approach has been applied to populations belonging to the following European traditional breeds: Gascon (France), Iberian (Spain), Krskopolje (Slovenia), Mangalitsa (Serbia), Moravka (Serbia) and Turopolje (Croatia). For each breed, faecal samples have been collected along different experiments performed in the TREASURE project targeting the comprehension of a particular traditional production system (e.g. open-air farming), management practice, or the comparison of breeds. In all experiments, the metagenomics technique employed is the resequencing of the bacterial 16S in an Illumina MiSeq system. Overall, the results have shown that the gut microbiota analysis is a promising approach for the characterisation of these local breeds, by allowing a deeper understanding of their production systems and potentially allowing the development of new certification approaches. Preliminary results will be summarized in this communication. Funded by European Union's H2020 RIA program (Grant agreement no. 634476).

Unlike in modern breeds, the knowledge on performance and management of local pig breeds is very limited. These are key aspects to be developed for their successful exploitation that requires strategies adapted to their specific productive and metabolic characteristics, quite different from those of modern pig breeds, to ensure their preservation and future expansion, particularly for those more endangered. These are some of the challenges addressed by the project TREASURE. For this purpose, a series of experiments involving 11 European local breeds -differing in the level of development- have been carried out covering various and complementary aspects like nutritional requirements in different productive phases (Cinta Senese, Iberian), feeding practices involving locally available resources (Krskopolje, Schwäbisch- Hällisches, Turopolje, Mangalitsa, Bísaro, Iberian, Gascon), and innovative management and housing practices to enhance product quality or improve animal welfare (Cinta Senese, Alentejano, Bisaro, Iberian, Mangalitsa, Moravka, Krskopolje, Schwäbisch-Hällisches, Black Slavonian). All these activities have been designed to obtain essential information to develop future productive strategies for each of the involved breeds, taking into account to obtain local high-quality products, and seeking for optimum pig performance and high animal welfare conditions in the production systems under consideration. The information provided constitutes a unique and valuable set of data for the management of these breeds and the further development of local pork chains. In some cases it is the first available data for the breeds concerned. A general overview of the developed activities will be presented highlighting some of the achievements obtained. Funded by European Union's H2020 RIA program (Grant agreement no. 634476).

The objective of the present study is to evaluate the potential use of FT-NIRS for predicting intramuscular fat (IMF) and fatty acid groups (MUFA; PUFA; PUFA n-3, PUFA n-6; SFA) on pig grounded muscles. The research considered 160 fresh samples of Longissimus collected from 12 European local pig breeds (TREASURE* project). For every sample, lipids were extracted from IMF and fatty acid profile was determinate by gas chromatography. Two aliquots of each sample were scanned using FT-NIRS Antaris II model. Mathematical pre-treatments (multiplicative scatter correction, 1st and 2nd derivate) were applied and outliers' spectra were identified and removed when necessary. Partial least square regression was used on the average spectrum and the models validated using an external data set. Results are evaluated in terms of coefficient of regression and root mean square errors in calibration (R2- RMSE) and validation (Rp2-RMSEP). As expected, the best results were obtained for IMF with R2 higher than 0.99 and RMSE lower than 0.2. Unsaturated fatty acids, probably due to the absorption of the cis double bond in a specific region of near infrared spectra, obtain acceptable R2 (0.89 for MUFA and 0.75 for PUFA n-3 and PUFA n-6). SFA achieved a R2 of 0.81 that is lower than values reported in other studies probably because of the large variability of genotypes used. The validation models achieved both lower coefficients of determination and higher RMSEP than the calibration models; however, R2 differences between calibration and validation were smaller than 5%, except for SFA. Hence, the FT-NIRS seems promising to estimate the principal parameters of fatty acid groups on muscle samples from different European autochthonous pig breeds. Inclusion of other samples can improve the accuracy and the robustness of the models, especially considering the high variability of the samples. *Funded by European Union's H2020 program (grant agreement No 634476).

Autochthonous pig breeds provide products of differentiated quality, among which quality control is difficult to perform and insufficient for current market requirements. The present research evaluates the predictive ability of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, combined with chemometric methods as a rapid and affordable tool to assure traceability and quality control. Thus, NIR technology was assessed for intact and minced muscle Longissimus thoracis et lumborum samples collected from 12 European autochthonous pig breeds for the quantification of lipid content and fatty acid composition. Different tests were performed using different numbers of samples for calibration and validation. The best predictive ability was found using minced presentation and set with 80% of the samples for the calibration and the remaining 20% for the external validation test for the following traits: lipid content and saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which attained both the highest determination coefficients (0.89, 0.61, and 0.65, respectively) and the lowest root mean square errors in external validation (0.62, 1.82, and 1.36, respectively). Lower predictive ability was observed for intact muscles. These results could contribute to improve the management of autochthonous breeds and to ensure quality of their products by traditional meat industry chains. ; This research was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant number 634476, for the project with acronym TREASURE. The content of this article reflects only the authors' view and the European Union Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. Junta of Extremadura and the European Social Fund for the pre-doctoral grant (PD16057) and the GR18098.