A possibility of increasing the content of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in broiler meat

Decreased intake of n3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and loss of balance of n-6/n-3 PUFA in the diet of people in the past 100-150 years may partly explain the occurrence and permanent increase of typical diseases of modern civilization such as cardiovascular, heart disease, allergies and various malignant diseases. The increase input of long chain PUFAn3 in the human diet can be achieved by enriching animal foods (meat, milk and eggs) with long chain PUFAn3 by feeding animals with feed rich in PUFAn3. Therefore the aim of our study was to determine the possibility of increasing the content of PUFAn3 and decreasing the ratio of PUFAn6/PUFAn3 in broiler meat using rapeseed cake in their nutrition. Three hundred sixty male day-old Cobb hybrid chickens were randomly divided into 12 groups of 30 individuals. Control groups of broilers were fed with mixture that did not contain any rapeseed cake (T-0) and experimental groups were fed with mixtures that contained rapeseed cake in the amount of 5 and 10% (T-5 and T-10). Each feeding treatment had four replicates. At the end of the study, 42 days old broilers were weighed and sacrificed immediately thereafter. Samples of breast muscle of 5 animals from each treatment were taken for the purpose of determining the composition of fatty acids. As a result we got that content of PUFAn3 increased significantly in breast muscle of T-10 group (1,62; 1,60; 2,20). In accordance with this, relationship of PUFAn6/PUFAn3 significantly decreased in breast muscle that treatment (20,94; 21,73; 16,15).