foods Article Muscle and Serum Metabolomics for Different Chicken Breeds under Commercial Conditions by GC–MS Chengkeng Tan 1,2 , Jinap Selamat 1,3, * , Nuzul Noorahya Jambari 1,3 , Rashidah Sukor 1,3 , Suganya Murugesu 1 and Alfi Khatib 4   Citation: Tan, C.; Selamat, J.; Jambari, N.N.; Sukor, R.; Murugesu, S.; Khatib, A. Muscle and Serum Metabolomics for Different Chicken Breeds under Commercial Conditions by GC–MS. Foods 2021, 10, 2174. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/foods10092174 Academic Editor: Michel Aliani Received: 6 August 2021 Accepted: 12 August 2021 Published: 14 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Food Safety and Food Integrity (FOSFI), Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Food Security, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang 43400, Selangor, Malaysia; cktan@moh.gov.my (C.T.); noorahya@upm.edu.my (N.N.J.); rashidah@upm.edu.my (R.S.); suganya@upm.edu.my (S.M.) 2 National Public Health Laboratory, Ministry of Health Malaysia, Lot 1853, Kampung Melayu Sungai Buloh, Sungai Buloh 47000, Selangor, Malaysia 3 Department of Food Science, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang 43400, Selangor, Malaysia 4 Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuantan 25200, Pahang, Malaysia; alfikhatib@iium.edu.my * Correspondence: jinap@upm.edu.my or sjinap@gmail.com; Tel.: +603-9769-1466 Abstract: Globally, village chicken is popular and is known as a premium meat with a higher price. Food fraud can occur by selling other chicken breeds at a premium price in local markets. This study aimed to distinguish local village chicken from other chicken breeds available in the market, namely, colored broiler (Hubbard), broiler (Cobb), and spent laying hen (Dekalb) in pectoralis major and serum under commercial conditions using an untargeted metabolomics approach. Both pectoralis major and serum were analyzed using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The principal component analysis (PCA) results distinguished four different chicken breeds into three main groups for pectoralis major and serum. A total of 30 and 40 characteristic metabolites were identified for pectoralis major and serum, respectively. The four chicken breeds were characterized by the abundance of metabolites such as amino acids (L−glutamic acid, L−threonine, L−serine, L−leucine), organic acids (L−lactic acid, succinic acid, 3−hydroxybutyric acid), sugars (D−allose, D−glucose), sugar alcohols (myo−inositol), and fatty acids (linoleic acid). Our results suggest that an untargeted metabolomics approach using GC–MS and PCA could discriminate chicken breeds for pectoralis major and serum under commercial conditions. In this study, village chicken could only be distinguished from colored broiler (Hubbard) by serum samples. Keywords: GC–MS; metabolomics; chicken; biomarkers; pectoralis major; serum; PCA 1. Introduction Chicken meat is known as the most popular poultry meat worldwide. The demand for poultry meat has increased in the past few decades due to healthy eating habits [1]; better choice and its lower cost than red meat; readiness for further processing; and it having no religious, cultural, or political prohibitions [2]. In the global poultry sector, including in Asian countries, village chickens have been shown significant demand for the past few decades, with prices two to four times higher than broiler [3]. Village chicken demand is notably high due to its uniqueness in flavor and better meat quality [4]. The market age for the village chicken is about 4–5 months, with 1–1.5 kg of live weight on average [5,6]. There are many occasions that underage colored broiler is sold as village chicken at a premium price to fraud the consumers for economic gain [7,8]. The manipulation of the market age of chickens sold in the market may lead to food fraud and counterfeiting risk due to the size similarity of the whole carcass between the chicken breeds. Furthermore, the consumers struggle to recognize the type of chicken breeds in terms of the retail cut of breast meat Foods 2021, 10, 2174. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10092174 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/foods