Fitness for purpose and stability assessment of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in chicken tissues

Abstract

The global popularity of chicken in human diets make it an obvious choice for enrichment with DHA and LC-PUFA. There is presently a need for a robust method for the analysis of chicken tissues and where the fitness for purpose of the method has been demonstrated. The purpose of this paper is to present the validation of the AOAC method 996.06 on five different chicken tissues; breast, thigh, skin, kidney and liver. The parameters investigated as part of the validation study included; linearity and range, the limit of detection and limit of quantification, accuracy, repeatability, inter-analyst reproducibility, and specificity. The method was further applied to assess the stability of DHA and other specific LC-PUFA in chicken tissues over short and long timepoints. The disclosure of this information is relevant for researchers concerned with the analysis of LC-PUFA in regulatory and efficacy studies.

Keywords: Analytical method; Chicken tissue; DHA; GC-FID; Validation.