Effects of breed, tissue and gender on cholesterol contents of pork from local Lithuanian pig breeds

The objective of this study (within TRESURE project) was to examine the effects of breed, tissue location and gender on the cholesterol content in different tissues of local Lithuanian pig breeds. The study was carried out on 24 Lithuanian White and 18 Lithuanian indigenous wattle pigs, 28 females and 14 castrated males. All pigs received a complete concentrate feed. Pork composition and properties were detected according to the EU reference methods. The cholesterol content was determined by HPLC analysis using the system Shimadzu 10Avp. The data were subject to the analysis of variance in general linear (GLM) procedure in SPSS 17. The model included the fixed effect of breed, gender, tissue location and feeding level. LSD significance test was used to determine the significance of differences of means between the groups. The comparisons of local conserved Lithuanian breeds showed negligible differences in the longissimus muscle fat content, however semimembranosus muscle of Lithuanian White pigs had higher fat content than the same muscle of Lithuanian indigenous wattle pigs (P<0.05). Although longissimus muscle from both Lithuanian pig breeds has lower contents of cholesterol (P<0.01) compared with the conventional hybrids, the differences between Lithuanian breeds were not large. Only the backfat of Lithuanian White pigs had higher content of cholesterol than the backfat from Lithuanian indigenous wattle pigs (P<0.05). The lowest contents of cholesterol were found in the backfat (P<0.001) and the highest contents in the semimembranosus muscle from both breeds, however, the differences between the muscles were not significant. The gender of pigs showed its effect on the semimembranosus cholesterol content (P<0.05): females had higher content of cholesterol than castrated males. Cholesterol contents in both muscles showed negative correlations with pig age (P<0.001). In the semimembranosus muscle cholesterol content showed negative correlation with pig weight (P<0.05). Negative correlations were also found between backfat thickness and cholesterol content in backfat. Funded by European Union’s H2020 RIA program (grant agreement no. 634476).