Abstract:
This study was conducted to examine the effect of age and breeds on the fatty acid profile of cattle in, Ethiopia.A total of 24 bullscomposed of Arsi, Borana, Harar, and cross of HF cattle with 2-3 and 4-5 agecategorieswere used for this study. Experimental bulls were fattened at the Beef Farm of Hararamaya University for 90 days. Then after, the bulls were slaughtered at Elfora export abattoirBishoftu following the standard procedure of the abattoir. Meat samples were collected from longissimus dorsi and subcutaneous fat for fatty acid analysis.The most abandon fatty acids in subcutaneous fat were myristic, palmitic, oleic and stearic acid while, palmitic, stearic and oleic acid were higher in the concentration of longissimus dorsi in this study. Saturation fatty acid, Mono unsaturation fatty acid and Poly unsaturation fatty acid were significantly (p<0.05) affected by breed insubcutaneous fat. The highest and lowest saturation fatty acidaccumulation was found in crosses of HF (57.08) and Harar (47.18) cattle breeds, respectively. Age and breeds of cattle had a considerable influence (p<0.05) on fatty acid profiles of longissimus dorsi and subcutaneous fat of the experimental cattle. The longissimus dorsi of Borana containshigher (P<0.05) percentage of saturation fatty acid. Despite the difference in fatty acid proportion in muscle and subcutaneous fat between breeds, and agesthe ratio of n-6/n-3 indicated that the beef from breeds and agesunder the study could not expose human health to risk associated with fat.Stepwise discriminant analysis identified seven traits to have more discriminating power in assessing variation between the meat sampled. Theexistence of between tissue (subcutaneous and longissimus) differences was confirmed by discriminant analysis,whichrevealed that the studded tissue can be distinguishedaccording to fatty acid profile with an overall prediction of 96%.There for further validation of this result, further study of SCD gene and providing unsaturated fatty acid rich feed for Animals are recommended.
