Sensory Evaluation of Lamb’s Meat from Vlasina Lake, Serbia

It is known that sheep and lamb are highly nutritious. In Serbia, the most delicious mountain lambs why are most of the country and the world. In the modern economy of sheep production, it is considered that 85-90% of the income is provided from the obtained meat and milk used for fattening lambs, while only 10-15% of the total value of income is realized with wool. The characteristics and composition of lamb meat, above all, depend on the way the animals are raised, as well as on the application of many measures that need to be taken in the fattening of young lambs. The purpose of this paper is to determine the sensory properties of lamb meat. The research was carried out on 12 lambs (6 male and 6 female) of the “Pirot improved sheep” were examined in order to determine the influence of length of fattening lambs and gender of lambs on sensory properties of fresh and thermally treated lamb meat. The first group of lambs was fattened for 60 days, the second and the third 120 and 180 days. Nutrition of the lamb to rejection (40 days) is the mother's milk. After 40 days, it switched to pelleted concentrate (with 18% protein) and a quality hay, which was ad libidum as the concentrate. At the end of the fattening, the lamb is slaughtered by the usual technique. The examined sensory properties of meat are: colour, odour, texture, marbling with points from 0 to 5. The best sensory features have the fresh meat of the lambs of the third group, and a weaker average score has the meat of the first group. The lamb's sex has an effect on the meat's marbling. Marbling is significantly better for female lambs meat than male lamb meat (P <0.05). The odour, flavour, tenderness and softness for thermally treated lamb meat in all three groups are not significant for male and female lambs. Mean tenderness values are significant (P <0.01) higher in the second in relation to the first group for both genders lambs. The sensory characteristics of roasted meat of female lambs for the three groups were assessed with higher grades compared to male lamb meat. Statistically significant differences between the genders in terms of meat flavour were determined for the second (P <0.05) and the third (P <0.01) group of lambs. It can be concluded that thermally treated meat of female lambs has better sensory qualities than the male lamb's meat. Differences in mass losses between the first and third, as well as between the second and third groups are significant (P <0.01). The gender of lambs does not have a significant effect on the mass losses of meat during cooking or roasting.