Produzioni alternative per la valorizzazione della podolica.

Rearing of native breeds and promoting their typical products may be a useful tool for preserving biodiversity together with supporting socio-economic development of marginal areas. Podolian cattle, a native breed of Southern Italy, are directly descendants of Eurasian Aurochs Bos primigenius primigenius. The Podolian system has an intrinsic and natural high level of sustainability in terms of environmental integrity and animal welfare. However, its economic sustainability should be improved. A suitable tool for promoting Podolian production may be processing meat from culled cows in dry-sausages. These products, in fact, may represent an innovation as compared with conventional pork sausages as well as a tool to increase the value of culled cow meat. This study aimed to compare dry sausages processed with Podolian meat (PS), adding pork fat, salt, and other spices with those produced with traditional “lucanica” sausages (CS) in terms of sensory profile and acceptability. A trained 12-member panel performed a quantitative descriptive analysis on slices from both SP and SC. Panellists rated the intensities of specific attributes on the basis of 100-mm unstructured lines with anchor points at each end (0 = absent, 100 = very strong). Scores were the distances (millimetre) from the left anchor point. A 80-member consumer panel evaluated both products for overall liking and for liking according to the following sensory inputs: appearance, taste/flavour and texture. Consumers rated their liking on a 9-point hedonic scale (from “extremely unpleasant” to “extremely pleasant”). No significant differences were observed between the two products in terms of sensory properties, apart from hardness (P<0.001) that was lower in PS sausages. CS showed higher overall (P<0.05), taste/flavour (P<0.01), appearance (P<0.01) and texture (P<0.05) liking. Nevertheless PS was characterised by good eating qualities as all liking parameters were rated above the central point of the hedonic scale (6.12 ± 0.17, 5.76 ± 0.18, 5.77 ± 0.18, 5.97 ± 0.17, for overall, taste/flavour, appearance and texture liking, respectively). As hardness is a parameter affected by ripening phase, the use of cow meat probably may need the development of a specific process procedures in order to improve the acceptability of these alternative products.