Correlation between Electrical Conductivity and Salt Content in Tuna Meat

Abstract

: In tuna industry, salt content in tuna meat is necessary to be determined for quality control by traditional method, in which some chemicals are expensive and not environmental friendly. Therefore, applications of simple analytical methodologies that ensure quality are in demand. This research studied the ability of electrical conductivity (EC) value to predict the salt content in a flesh of skipjack tuna meat compared with the traditional method which used automatic titration. Tuna samples sampling from different sizes (all 8 sizes ranged from 0.10-0.99 to 6.10-9.00 kg) and three different sources were determined chemical composition, salt content and EC value. Salt content and EC value varied depending on tuna size ( P <0.05) and sources ( P <0.05). Prediction model was built with a total of 170 tuna samples. As per the result, the Pearson correlation (r) showed the relationship of salt content and EC value as 0.92 with P <0.05. This result indicated that EC value had a high correlation with salt content in flesh of tuna meat in a positive direction with statistically significant ( P <0.01). The coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of the prediction model was obtained at 0.85; the linear regression model had a good fit. Comparison of actual and predicted salt content with paired samples t-test indicated that two variables had a high correlation with a positive direction (r=0.91) with non-significant difference ( P ≥0.05). In conclusion, EC is really promising for application to predict salt content in tuna meat.