Tenderization Efficiency of Cucumis Extract (Cucumis Trigonus Rox-b) Compared with Papain enzyme on the Aged Bull Meat by Injection Method

This study was carried out to develop a method for enhancing tenderness and overall qualities of Karadi tough aged bull meat (more than 5 years old) by using a proteolytic extract from cucumis fruit (Cucumis trigonus Rox-b) compared to papain enzyme. After slaughter bull and dressing carcass, the three main muscle, longissimus dorsi (LD), semimembranosus (SM) and supraspinatus (SS) were evaluated by injecting brine supplied with extract solutions in different concentrations. (0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 % of cold cucumis extract solution and 0.02 % of Papain extract solution and distilled water as a group) at an average of injection of 10 % muscle weight. Overall, there were significant (p˂0.05) reduction of muscle pH, water holding capacity and cooking loss and significant (p˂0.05) increase in collagen solubility, nitrogen solubility in LD, SM and SS muscle samples treated with cucumis extract compared with control and Papain enzyme. The increased concentration of cucumis extract resulted in a significant increase (p˂0.05) in total and myofibrillar protein solubility with a slight increase of sarcoplasmic solubility in muscle samples that treated with cucumis extract compared to control and Papain enzyme. The electrophoresis pattern of muscle treated samples also revealed extensive proteolysis occurring in each muscle type. The results of the sensory evaluation indicated that the tenderness, juiciness and overall acceptability of all treated muscle samples significantly (p<0.05) improved compared with control. In our experiment, generally, cucumis extract tended to be more effective than papain extract for most of the studied traits. Therefor it can be summarized that cucumis extract is one of the best alternative source of proteolytic enzymes for the effective tenderizing of meat.