Abstract
The amount of intramuscular fat (IMF) present in the loin eye area is one of the most important characteristics of high-quality pork. IMF measurements are currently impractical without a labor-intensive process. Metabolomic profiling could be used as an IMF indicator to avoid this process; however, no studies have investigated their use during the fattening period of pigs. This study examined the metabolite profiles in the plasma of two groups of pigs derived from the same Duroc genetic line and fed the same diet. Five plasma samples were collected from each individual the day before slaughter. Capillary electrophoresis-time of flight mass spectrometry (CE-TOFMS) was used to analyze the purified plasma from each sample. Principle component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) were used to find the semi-quantitative values of the compounds. The results indicate that branched-chain amino acids are significantly associated with high IMF content, while amino acids are associated with low IMF content. These differences were validated using the quantification analyses by high-performance liquid chromatograph, which supported our results. These results suggest that the concentration of branched-chain amino acids in plasma could be an indicative biomarker for the IMF content in the loin eye area.
Highlights
Pork consumers depend primarily on meat quality when making purchasing decisions.Intramuscular fat (IMF) content in the loin eye muscle, known as marbling, is a valuable trait of high-quality pork and is associated with the meat’s flavor
Since the partial least squares (PLS) was performed between two groups, we only considered PLS1 separation
This study sought to identify the metabolites associated with intramuscular fat (IMF) content in pork loin eye muscle using CE-TOFMS metabolomics data detected in pig plasma before slaughter
Summary
Pork consumers depend primarily on meat quality when making purchasing decisions.Intramuscular fat (IMF) content in the loin eye muscle, known as marbling, is a valuable trait of high-quality pork and is associated with the meat’s flavor. The heritability of IMF content in Duroc breed pigs has been estimated to be moderate to high (0.39 to 0.69) [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. This has led to improvements in the phenotypic value of livestock in recent decades, despite that IMF is recognized as a polygenic trait [1,12].
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