Histological and histochemical evalution of geese muscle tissue

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate histological structure of goose muscle tissue in geese originating from breeding farm in Tešedíkovo (south-western region of the Slovak Republic). The abundance and thickness of muscle fibres, abundance of adipose and connective tissue and correlations between these indicators were evaluated. Twenty 16-week-old geese with live weight of 5.28 kg were used in experiment. Animals were raised on geese breeding farm at the same conditions. Samples for histochemical analysis were taken from musculus pectoralis major and musculus biceps femoris within 30 minutes after slaughtering and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen, subsequently histochemically processed. The 10 – 15 µm slices were chopped on minicryostat instrument. Sections were coloured by hematoxilin-eozin, oil-red and individual types of muscle fibres were differentiated according to the reaction with succinate-dehydrogenase. For histological structure analysis of listed muscles, microscope Nikon connected with software Lucia were used. From obtained data were calculated statistical indicators. In m. pectoralis major the highest percentual abundance of white muscle fibres (48.53 %) and the lowest abundance of intermediate muscle fibres (1.93 %) were obtained. The same tendency of abundance of different types of muscle fibres was obtained in m. pectoralis femoris (white muscle fibres – 56.77 %, intermediate muscle fibres – 2.03 %). In m. biceps femoralis the highest values of white muscle fibre thickness and the lowest values of red muscle fibre thickness were obtained. Similarly in m. biceps femoralis the highest values of white muscle fibres and the lowest values of red muscle fibres were obtained, while average thickness of red muscle fibres in m. pectoralis major was lower by 22.99 µm in comparison with red muscle fiber thickness in m. biceps femoralis. Higher abundance of connective tissue than fat tissue was obtained in both muscles, while biceps femoris had just nearly half values of fat tissue abundance in pectoralis muscle. In fat cell diameter there were no significant differences between muscles. Significant negative correlation between white and red muscle fibre abundance in both muscles was obtained. In femoris muscle significant negative correlation between white muscle fibre and tissue abundance and positive correlation between white muscle fibre diameter and live weight of geese was obtained.