As a "rare bird on the plateau", the Tibetan chicken is rich in nutrition and has high medicinal value. In order to quickly and effectively identify the source of food safety problems and to label fraud regarding this animal, it is necessary to identify the geographical traceability of the Tibetan chicken. In this study, Tibetan chicken samples from four different cities in Tibet, China were analyzed. The amino acid profiles of Tibetan chicken samples were characterized and further subjected to chemometric analyses, including orthogonal least squares discriminant analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, and linear discriminant analysis. The original discrimination rate was 94.4%, and the cross-validation rate was 93.3%. Moreover, the correlation between amino acid concentrations and altitudes in Tibetan chicken was studied. With the increase in altitude, all amino acid contents showed a normal distribution. For the first time, amino acid profiling has been comprehensively applied to trace the origin of plateau animal food with satisfactory accuracy.
Keywords: Tibetan chicken; altitude; amino acids; geographical origins; meat; plateau.