Consumer sensory assessments of chicken breeds: the role of location, age, and gender in resource-poor communities for food security and sustainable livelihoods

The objective of the study was to determine the effect of location, age and gender of consumers on sensory evaluation characteristics. The study focused on village chickens breeds (non-descriptive breed and Potchefstroom Koekoek) and broiler chickens in resource-poor communities. A total of 120 chickens were evaluated, comprising of three breeds mainly: broilers (n = 40), Potchefstroom Koekoek (n = 40) and a non-descriptive breed (n = 40). For each breed, chickens were equally divided by sex (20 females and 20 males) and further categorized by age, into 10 growers and 10 mature chickens. The effect of breed, sex and age on sensory characteristics was measured by the use of a 9-point system. The results showed that color scales for female and male chickens ranged from 5.02 to 5.57. This suggest that meat color from female and male chickens were relatively the same. Taste varied from 5.15 to 5.98 and the highest scale was recorded in growing broiler chickens. Broiler chickens were tasty compared to other chicken breeds. The same trend was observed for juiciness from 4. 87 to 5.41. Gender had the highest level of significance (p < 0.001) on color than location (p < 0.01), breed (p > 0.05) and age (p < 0.05). The interaction between variables were measured, a significant interaction between gender × age and location × age was recorded. A significant effect of gender and age on taste with n interaction (p < 0.05) of location × age was observed. On the overall acceptability of grower and mature chickens, a significant linear relationship was observed between location, age and breed. There was a (p < 0.05) negative correlation between the location and tenderness (r=−0.25) of broilers in grower female chickens. In grower male chickens, a (p < 0.05) negative correlation between location and taste (r=−0.22) was recorded. Lastly, a significant positive correlation with tenderness (r = 0.17) and gender was noted for broilers. It was concluded that there is an effect of location, age, and gender of consumers in sensory characteristics on the consumer sensory assessments.