changes were observed in both SA and IMA samples. Therefore, it appeared that the major peak between To and Tc2 in the DSC curve of adipose tissues represented the heat transition of fat in the tissues.
The glass-capillary tube method is generally used follow in fat extraction for analysis of the melting point of pork fat (Dugan, 1987). The capillary tube method, however, requires many steps for analysis such as fat extraction, capillary preparation, and determination. Additionally, the melting point in the capillary tube method is a subjective visual inspection. Therefore, use of capillary tube method has been difficult to maintain objectivity and repeatability of determination of the melting point. Waugh and Small (1984) successfully analyzed rabbit lipid-rich tissue, including adipose tissues, by DSC for in situ tissue lipid characterization, and, thus it was hypothesized that the direct application of the DSC to porcine adipose tissue would be a useful and simple method for analysis of pork fat melting pattern because it requires only one step of sample preparation and allows for objective detection of phase transition. To investigate