Muscle firmness and toughness
Shear force required to cut through the third abdominal segment of prawn samples was determined using ‘V’ shaped Warner-Bratzler Meat-Shear Compression type blade attached to the load cell (100 N) moving under 100% working load with a cross head speed of 0.25 mm/s. The highest peak from the force distance graph obtained represented the muscle firmness and was measured in Newton (N), while the toughness of the muscle tissue (or work done to shear the muscle)was calculated as the area under the graph (Rosenthal, 1999), expressed in Newton metre (Nm).