IMPACT OF DIETARY INCLUSION LEVELS OF CAMELINA CAKE (Camelina sativa (L.) CRANTZ) ON MEAT QUALITY IN GROWING-FATTENING RABBITS

The present research tested the feasibility of a dietary incorporation with different levels of Camelina sativa (CS) cake in the diet of growing rabbits as a partial or total replacement of rapeseed meal. To this purpose, a n=168 32-days-old hybrid Hyplus rabbits were divided into 3 treatments (n=56 per treatment) and fed with one of the following experimental pelleted diets: Control diet (10% rapeseed cake as major source of crude protein), CS5 diet (5% rapeseed cake and 5% CS cake), and CS10 diet (10% CS cake). At 74 days of age, rabbits were electrically stunned and slaughtered. Then, from n=14 randomly selected rabbit carcasses/treatment, n=1 hind leg was excised, deboned, ground, and freeze-dried in order to determine hind leg proximate composition and fatty acid (FA) profile. Data were analysed by a one-way ANOVA that considered the dietary treatment as fixed effect. Results showed the dietary inclusion of CS did not affect the proximate composition of rabbit hind leg, except for moisture content which was higher in Control meat than in CS10 one, with CS5 treatment having an intermediate result (P=0.0359). Differently the dietary treatment affected meat FA profile: the proportion of total Polyunsaturated FA (PUFA) linearly increased along with CS inclusion level (P<0.0001), to the detriment of both total Saturated FA (SFA) (P=0.0006) and Monounsaturated FA (MUFA) (P<0.0001). The PUFA increase was attributable to both n-6 (P=0.0088) and n-3 (P<0.0001) fractions. Results of the present experiment indicated that the replacement of 10% rapeseed cake with CS cake can be specifically recommended to increase PUFA proportion of rabbit meat, especially the beneficial n-3 fraction.