The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the effect of broiler strain and dietary lysine level on breast meat yield and quality. Two thousand two hundred and fifty day old straightrun chicks from commercial strains named A, B and C were reared in a factorial 3x3 arrangement (strain and dietary lysine level) with five replicates of 50 birds per pen. The broiler chikens were feed ad libitun with a corn and soybean diet withing the following lysine levels: 1.18, 1.24 and 1.30% in pre-starter diets (1-7 days); 1.10, 1.16 and 1.22% in starter diets (7-21 days); 1.00, 1.06 and 1.12 % in grower diets (21-35 days) and .85, .91 and .97% in finishing diets (35-42 days). Total breast yield, breast meat yield, pH, breast measures (high, width and lenght), weight cooking loss, and breast meat shear force were evaluated. There were no effect of strain and diet on breast yield. Related to breast meat yield, strain A presented higher values than strain B. Strain C presented the highest breast lenght. There were effects of lysine level only for pH. pH was affected by strain and dietary lisine level. It was concluded that lysine level affected only pH value. Strain affected breast meat yield, lenght and pH, where strain A showed the highest values for yield and pH and strain C for breast lenght.
breast; broiler; lysine; pH; yield
