Abstract
The aim of this study was to elucidate the underlying biochemical processes to identify potential key molecules of meat quality traits drip loss, pH of meat 1 h post-mortem (pH1), pH in meat 24 h post-mortem (pH24) and meat color. An untargeted metabolomics approach detected the profiles of 393 annotated and 1,600 unknown metabolites in 97 Duroc × Pietrain pigs. Despite obvious differences regarding the statistical approaches, the four applied methods, namely correlation analysis, principal component analysis, weighted network analysis (WNA) and random forest regression (RFR), revealed mainly concordant results. Our findings lead to the conclusion that meat quality traits pH1, pH24 and color are strongly influenced by processes of post-mortem energy metabolism like glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway, whereas drip loss is significantly associated with metabolites of lipid metabolism. In case of drip loss, RFR was the most suitable method to identify reliable biomarkers and to predict the phenotype based on metabolites. On the other hand, WNA provides the best parameters to investigate the metabolite interactions and to clarify the complex molecular background of meat quality traits. In summary, it was possible to attain findings on the interaction of meat quality traits and their underlying biochemical processes. The detected key metabolites might be better indicators of meat quality especially of drip loss than the measured phenotype itself and potentially might be used as bio indicators.
Highlights
Sensory and technological quality characteristics of meat products are essential for acceptance of consumers and manufacturing industries
With the exception of the correlation between pH1 and pH24 measured in longissimus dorsi (LD), all correlation coefficients between meat quality parameters were significant different from 0 and had the expected sign (Table 1)
Using Metabolomic Discoveries' databases, 393 metabolites were successfully assigned to a biological function along with a tagged name and description
Summary
Sensory and technological quality characteristics of meat products are essential for acceptance of consumers and manufacturing industries. The variability of meat quality is high and the regulation of muscle properties influencing meat quality traits is still unclear [1]. One important commercially interesting meat quality parameter is the ability of meat to retain water known as water-holding capacity (WHC). In order to characterize WHC in pork, drip loss is measured. High drip loss leads to significant reduction of meat quality resulting in monetary.
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