Fatty acid proﬁle of three adipose depots in seven Spanish breeds of suckling kids A. Horcada a, ⁎, G. Ripoll b , M.J. Alcalde a , C. Sañudo c , A. Teixeira d , B. Panea b a Departamento de Ciencias Agroforestales, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Agronómica, Universidad de Sevilla, 41013 Sevilla, Spain b Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón, Avenida de Montañana, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain c Departamento de Producción Animal y Ciencia de los Alimentos, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50013 Zaragoza, Spain d Escola Superior Agraria, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolonia, Apartado 1172, Bragança, Portugal abstract article info Article history: Received 12 September 2011 Received in revised form 11 April 2012 Accepted 13 April 2012 Keywords: Goat Intramuscular fat Subcutaneous fat Kidney knob fat Intramuscular, subcutaneous and kidney knob fat depot fatty acid proﬁles were studied in 104 male suckling kids from seven Spanish breeds: Blanca Andaluza, Blanca Celtibérica, Moncaína, Negra Serrana-Castiza, Pirenaica, Malagueña and Murciano-Granadina. Kids were raised in the traditional production system on mother's milk and slaughtered at around 7 kg live weight. Differences were observed between dairy (Malagueña) and meat breeds (Blanca Andaluza, Blanca Celtibérica, Moncaína, Negra Serrana-Castiza, and Pirenaica). Malagueña showed higher monounsaturated and conjugated linoleic fatty acid levels than the other breeds. Highest percent- ages of saturated fatty acids were observed in meat breeds. For intramuscular fat depot, the range for desirable fatty acids was 66.16–72.27% was. The inﬂuence of breed on fatty acid proﬁles of intramuscular, subcutaneous and kidney knob fat depots studied was evident. Intramuscular fat depot is proposed as a differentiating factor between dairy and meat breed goat kids, but not between meat breed kids. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Goats are an important species due to their contribution to the de- velopment of both rural areas and the people who inhabit them (Dubeuf, Morand-Fehr, & Rubino, 2004), and according to DAD-IS (2010) 512 local goat breeds are recognized worldwide, of which 170 are in Europe. The EU accounts for 13.1% of the total annual world production of goat milk and 1.9% of goat meat (FAOSTAT, 2010) and Mediterranean countries such as Greece, Spain, France and Italy are Europe's main goat producers (Castel, Ruiz, Mena, & Sánchez- Rodriguez, 2010). In 2009, Spain was the second largest goat producer in Europe (2.3 million heads; FAOSTAT, 2010), and 22 local breeds are recognized in this country (MARM, 2011). Although most of the goats are dairy breeds (68.05%), goat meat farming is also a signiﬁ- cant activity (Castel et al., 2010). Dairy goat breeds are mainly reared intensively with concentrate supplements, whereas meat breeds are frequently reared extensively or semi-extensively. Regardless of whether the breed is for dairy or meat purposes, in these different pro- duction systems all kids are fed exclusively on their mothers' milk to produce suckling goat kids for meat, with a live weight of 10–11 kg be- cause the market prefers carcass weights of 5–7 kg (Marichal, Castro, Capote, Zamorano, & Argüello, 2003). Goat meat is almost universally considered to be acceptable, but cul- tural traditions and social and economic conditions inﬂuence consumers' preferences (Casey, Van Niekerk, & Webb, 2003). Traditionally, goat meat has been considered an expensive product that is consumed on festive occasions. On the other hand, consumers' purchasing decisions are inﬂuenced by their perception of “food healthiness” that, in the case of meat, is largely related to fat content (McAfee et al., 2010). In- deed, the saturated fatty acid content of animal fat is one of the main reasons for rejecting meat (Biesalski, 2005) since it has been widely reported that high consumption of saturated fatty acids is related to car- diovascular diseases (Wood et al., 2004). However, it is important to highlight the beneﬁcial effects of edible animal fats (intramuscular and subcutaneous) on human health. Particularly, the advantageous nutri- tional value of the meat of small ruminants is related to their n -3 PUFA and to the cis-9, trans-11 CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) isomer content, there being evidence that these fatty acids have the potential to improve long-term human health (Banskalieva, Sahlu, & Goesch, 2000). It has been widely reported that various factors such as diet (Wood et al., 2004), slaughter weight (Horcada, Beriain, Chasco, Indurain, & Purroy, 2010), fatness degree (Nürnberg, Wegner, & Ender, 1998) and fat depot location (Banskalieva et al., 2000) all have an inﬂuence on the fatty acid proﬁle of fat depots. Differences between internal (kidney knob fat) and external (subcutaneous) fat depots have been widely demonstrated. Internal fat depots show higher saturated fatty acid con- centrations than external fat depots or intramuscular fat (Horcada, Beriain, Lizaso, Insausti, & Purroy, 2009). Although the effect of breed has been studied (Díaz et al., 2005), it is usually difﬁcult to assess the real contribution of genetics to differences in fatty acid composition be- cause other factors such as diet, degree of fatness or origin and the pro- duction system can inﬂuence it (Sañudo et al., 2000). However, fatty Meat Science 92 (2012) 89–96 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Departamento Ciencias Agroforestales, EUITA, Universidad de Sevilla, Ctra. de Utrera km 1, 41013 Sevilla, Spain. Tel.: +34 954486448; fax: +34 954486436. E-mail address: albertohi@us.es (A. Horcada). 0309-1740/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.meatsci.2012.04.018 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Meat Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/meatsci