Sensory Evaluation Combined with Principal Component Analysis and Mahalanobis Distance to Compare the Volatile Flavor Substances of Different Chicken Species

To promote the development of yellow feather chicken industry in our country and optimize the better yellow feather chicken species for today's market, in this study four representative local yellow feather chicken species (Langshan chicken, Chongren chicken, Luyuan chicken and Wenchang chicken) were selected and the components of volatile flavor substances in their chest and leg muscles were measured. Firstly, the main gas components were extracted by headspace extraction and GC-MS, and then the principal components were extracted by PCA, followed by Markov distance analysis, and finally, the differences among chicken species were analyzed based on the results of sensory evaluation. In this study, a total of 29 gas components were extracted, among which alcohols, aldehydes and ketones were the main odor components. Two principal components were extracted from the multi-index system through PCA, and the cumulative contribution rate was 85%. The evaluation results combined with Mahalanobis distance and sensory assessment showed that: Four gas content between different breeds of significant differences (P<0.05), the Luyuan chicken kept the lowest number in the aspects of aldehydes, alcohols and ketones, which meaned it had the best smell, and Luyuan chicken also occupied obvious advantagein the fat, green grass and smoke small. It could be concluded that the smell state of Luyuan chicken was the best among the four chicken species.