INVESTIGATING FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF PIG SERUM RESPONSIBLE FOR BOAR TAINT USING GC×GC-TOFMS

Boar taint is a strong, unpleasant taste found in the meat of some uncastrated male pigs. The surgical castration of male piglets is a traditional practice to prevent boar taint meat worldwide. European pork production stakeholders agreed to prohibit surgical castration of piglets due to increased animal welfare concerns by 2018. These objectives are yet to be achieved successfully.
The aim of work was to understand the difference between boar-tainted (BT) pigs and untainted (UT) pigs based on a fatty acid profiling of pig serum using two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS).
In GC, conversion into a more volatile and stable component is essential to analyze saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. To improve measurement efficiency and obtain chromatographic separation of the lipids, a two-step sample extraction and derivatization (base-catalyzed transesterification and acid-catalyzed esterification) approach was optimized using DoE. The optimized condition has composite desirability of 0.9159.
A total of 40 pig serum samples were analyzed. The chemometric tests, unsupervised screening (PCA, HCA), univariate analysis (Volcano plot), and multivariate supervised analysis (PLS-DA) were performed. The results suggested that the concentration of PUFA ω-6 and cholesterol derivatives were significantly increased in BT pigs, whereas SFA and PUFA ω-3 were increased in UT pigs. These differences in the lipid composition are opening new investigation routes to better understand bore taint deviation.