of breast meat among the dietary treatments was LA content, which
increased linearly with the level of dried tomato pulp in the diet.
In the present study, the n − 6/n − 3 ratio ranged from 10.4 and
7.8 in the meat and perirenal fat of the rabbits fed the 0% TP diet, to
12.2 and 9.7 in the meat and perirenal fat of the rabbits fed 3% TP.
3.4. Consumer tests
Results of the consumer tests are summarized in Table 8. The preference
test indicated that meat samples from rabbits fed with 6% TP
were the most preferred (rank sum = 83), followed by meat from
the 3% TP group (rank sum = 99) and from the 0% TP group (rank
sum = 106). Data analysis found no significant differences between
product ranks at 0.05 level (P b 0.05). A significant difference was
found at 0.10 level. In this case, consumers were only capable of significantly
differentiating between meat from the 6% TP group and
meat from the 0% TP group which reached the highest rank sum.
Because the meat from the 0% TP group was the least preferred, this
group was chosen as the “noise” or control sample for R-index calculation.
In this study, an R-index of 50% suggests that the consumer's preferences
between two samples were close to chance, which means that
the two samples were essentially identical in terms of preference. An
R-index that is close to 100% indicates that one sample was strongly