摘要：Our study intends to delay the onset of rigor mortis and prolong the freshness by damaging the spinal cord of the olive flounder. The initial pH of nondamaged and damaged meat of the spinal cord was 7.07±0.05 and 7.10±0.12, respectively, but the pH at 20 hours postmortem dropped to 6.11±0.04 and 6.52±0.08, respectively. The initial TVB-N contents of the olive flounder meat with and without spinal cord damage were 2.0±0.1 and 2.5±0.3 mg/100 g, respectively. TVB-N contents at 20 hours postmortem were 10.4±0.6 mg/100 g in nondamaged meat and 8.4±0.8 mg/100 g in damaged meat. In the initial hour postmortem, the contents of APT in the meat were 5.80 and 5.65 mg/100 g in the control and spinal cord-damaged sample, but their contents decreased to 3.02 and 4.12 mg/100 g at 20 hours postmortem, respectively. The K-value of the control of the initial postmortem time was 0.5, but it increased to 16.8 at 20 hours postmortem. However, the K-value of the spinal cord-damaged samples increased from 0.6 to 9.6 during the postmortem time. The rigor mortis of the control started at 6 hours after death, and the rigor index rapidly increased to reach the maximum of 90.0% at 20 hours postmortem. In the spinal cord-damaged samples, the onset of rigor mortis was 12 hours postmortem, and the rigor index reached 74.3% at 20 hours postmortem. The breaking strength in meat without spinal cord damage reached its maximum value at 4 hours postmortem and sharply decreased until the end of the experiment. However, the breaking strength in meat with spinal cord damage recorded a maximum value at 8 hours postmortem, and its value was somewhat lower than that without spinal cord damage. Our results indicated that the freshness of the spinal cord-damaged sample extended approximately 4-8 hours beyond that of the nondamaged control.
