Research Article Solar Drying and Sensory Attributes of Eland (Taurotragus oryx) Jerky Iva KuIerová , Štjpán Marek, and Jan Banout Department of Sustainable Technologies, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamycka 129, Suchdol, 16521 Praha 6, Czech Republic Correspondence should be addressed to Jan Banout; banout@fz.czu.cz Received 29 September 2017; Revised 3 February 2018; Accepted 8 March 2018; Published 23 April 2018 Academic Editor: Alex Martynenko Copyright © 2018 Iva Kuˇ cerov´ a et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A double-pass solar drier (DPSD) and a laboratory oven (LO) were used for thin-layer drying of eland and beef. Prior to drying, the physicochemical characteristics of the raw meat were determined, such as pH, dry matter content (%), Warner-Bratzler shear force (N), pigment concentration (mg⋅kg −1 ), weight loss during cooking (%), water holding capacity (%), colour (, , ), and crude fat content (%). Both meats were pretreated with traditional jerky marinade (TM), TM with fresh pineapple juice (TMP), TM with honey (TMH), and TM with Coca Cola© (TMCCL) and compared to an untreated control (C). Te sensory properties of the eland and beef jerky were assessed in a two-stage process. Te surface colour values of the jerky samples were measured in the CIE  ∗  ∗  ∗ colour space and the efect of the diferent pretreatments on the overall combined colour (Δ) was calculated. Signifcant diferences ( < 0.05) between raw eland and beef samples were found in case of pH, pigment concentration, water holding capacity, crude fat content, and colour ( and ). Jerky from TMP pretreated meat had the highest scores for texture, colour, and taste. Generally, for both meats dried in both driers, TMH marinade was evaluated as the one with the highest total diference Δ compared to meat dipped in TMP pretreatment, which had the lowest total diference Δ. 1. Introduction Drying, particularly open sun drying, agricultural products such as fruit, vegetables, or meat is one of the oldest and still widespread conservation techniques used for food processing [1]. Drying in the sun is still a popular method in many developing countries, chiefy where no cold chain is available. Although, from the point of view of the sensory properties, dried meat cannot be compared with fresh meat, most nutritional properties, in particular the protein content, remain unchanged through drying [2]. Dried meats are traditional in diferent parts of the world and they are known as “cecina” in Spain, “biltong” in South Africa, “bresaola” in Italy, or “jerky” in America [3, 4]. Nowadays, jerky is more of a convenient snack food with a great variety of products where safe preservation, favour, and texture are important. Te market for meat snacks has rapidly grown in the past decade, and of those meat snacks, meat jerky is very popular because it can be purchased easily in retail shops worldwide and has long shelf stability and high protein content [5]. In developing countries the consumption of dried meat (in fresh meat equivalency) has continuously increased from a modest average annual per capita consumption of 10 kg in the 1960s to 26 kg in 2000 and it is projected to reach 37 kg around the year 2030 [2]. Te simplest method to make jerky is to cut meat into strips and dry it. More typically, spices or marinades are used to favour the meat, and curing or smoking might be used in combination with drying to make jerky [4]. Jerky can be made from diferent animal species (beef, pork, fsh, chicken, turkey, and/or venison) but more than 70% of jerky is produced from beef. Nowadays consumers are increas- ingly becoming concerned about healthy, natural, and safe products and the demand for these products is escalating. Game meat and venison meet most of the criteria demanded by a discerning consumer [6]. One of the prospec- tive venison and/or game animals is eland (Taurotragus oryx). Te eland is the largest kind of antelope comparable to the domestic ox not only in size but also in its placid nature and its meat is comparable to beef. Further, eland Hindawi Journal of Food Quality Volume 2018, Article ID 1067672, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/1067672