Fish is very important on the current scenario, and the maintenance of its quality and safety is essential to obtain a safe food. Since fish is a highly perishable food, it needs proper care at all stages of its production chain. One of the parameters most widely used worldwide to evaluate fish quality is the determination of the nitrogen of the total volatile bases (TVB-N), which consists of quantifying the low molecular weight compounds such as trimethylamine, dimethylamine and ammonia, formed during deterioration of the fish. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of two quantification methods of TVB-N by distillation, using three fish species of commercial importance, as well as to search for a more sustainable method using smaller amounts of sample and reagents. The recovery rate was used to verify the efficiency of the methodologies, adding known amounts of ammonium sulphate ((NH4) 2SO4) to samples and comparing the TVB-N recovered from a control sample). In order to reduce the amounts of sample and reagents, modifications of the BRAZIL (1999) methodology were tested. Considering the recovery of the nitrogen added to the samples, the results showed there was no difference in the recovery of nitrogen using the two methods (BRAZIL 1981 and 1999) for the three species, indicating that both could be used with the same efficiency. The results indicated that the reduction in the amounts of sample and reagents used in the TVB-N determination by the BRAZIL (1999) method, could significantly interfere with the results.
Recovery; Total Volatile Bases Nitrogen; Fish quality
