Characteristics of pig carcasses of two genetic breeds / Características de carcaças suínas de duas linhagens genéticas

Abstract

The production of good quality carcasses is the main goal of modern commercial and industrial pig farming.The genetic potential of commercial breeds has changed considerably, especially in terms of deposition rates of lean meat and lard thickness. By morphology and analysis of the small intestine one can evaluate the utilization of nutrients for the deposition of fat and meat in swine carcasses.This study aimed to evaluate the quality of carcasses from two commercial genetic breeds, using quantitative traits, and to investigate if there is difference in length and absorptive surface of the intestine, verifying if these data are correlated with the yield of lean meat on the carcass. 60 animals from each breed were slaughtered and evaluations made for the characteristics: hot carcass weight (HCW), carcass length (CL), lard thickness (LT), percentage of lean meat (LM%), intramuscular fat (IMF) and intestinal length (IL). For the analysis of intestinal absorption (IA) were used only 62 of the animals previously studied, being 31 animals of each genotype.The average values of CL and IMF presented differences between breeds. The meat of the swines studied presented a low IMF content, existing correlation between the LM% and LT. The breeds had statistically equal IC, AI and LM%. There was also correlation between LM% and LT.