Project Number: 1275-41000-005-04
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: May 18, 2006
End Date: May 31, 2010

Objective:
The objective of this cooperative research project is to develop prediction models using process kinetics fundamentals that describe the quality changes in meat products treated using hydrostatic pressure processing (HPP) and hydrodynamic pressure processing (HDP) systems. A computational modeling system will be useful to meat industry for predicting quality changes during high pressure processing of meats.

Approach:
A. Hydrostatic Pressure Processing Meat cuts, primarily beef loins obtained from meat packers and the animal science department at Virginia Tech, will be used for this project. Samples will be processed with high pressure processing at different pressure ranging from 70 MPa to 400 Mpa. High pressure processing system from Avure Technologies will be used to process the samples at various processing times, ranging from 10 seconds to 5 minutes. For each pressure-time combination, five different time intervals will be selected to obtain processed samples at various time intervals under the same pressure. This information is needed to generate the needed parameters in the quality kinetics models. B. Hydrodynamic Pressure Processing Samples will be processed with hydro-dyne unit or plastic explosive container (PEC) available at the USDA Beltsville facility. Samples will be treated with different charge levels and the pressure wave propagation will be monitored to study both the impact and after effects from the blast. The data obtained from both hydrostatic and hydrodynamic processing will be compared based on the energy input to the samples (pressure-time integrand). Quality Evaluation High pressure processed meat samples will be analyzed for color, tenderness (Warner-Bratzler shear force- WBS), texture profile (TPA), water holding capacity and flavor changes. Ultra-structural changes will be measured using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Ultrasound and digital imaging will also be used to evaluate changes in texture and color, as a result of high pressure processing. The investigators will evaluate changes in color in the CIE L*a*b* color space using a CCD camera, and compare it to the values from the colorimeter. Textural changes can also be evaluated by both digital and ultrasonic imaging. Wavelet- and Fourier transform-based analysis will be performed for images obtained from ultrasound scans and the digital camera. These analysis techniques give abundant information on image texture. These textural values shall be correlated to readings from TPA, WBS scores, and SEM. In addition, ultrasound parameters such as velocity and time of flight shall also be used for developing correlation models. Computational Modeling For computational modeling on structural changes a finite element model will be developed using computational fluid dynamics modeling systems (FEMLAB). Prediction model(s) will be incorporated into computational modeling system to describe the changes in the meat products during high pressure processing. Finally, quality attributes results from selected process conditions will be compared with the model predictions.