Beef Quality Evaluation Research Articles

Quality Multiverse of Beef and Pork Meat in a Single Score.

The rationale behind this review is the potential of developing a single score tool for meat quality evaluation based on visual and sensorial assessments of fresh meat. Based on the known sensory wheel concept, the first step was to create quality wheels capturing most common intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues of pork and beef outlined in the latest scientific papers. This resulted in identifying meat color, sensory characteristics and fat content as the most important intrinsic quality cues of fresh beef and pork. Furthermore, the highest number of studies showed the importance of price, certification logos and brand for beef quality evaluation. According to recent articles, price, breed, animal welfare and a veterinary certificate are the most important extrinsic attributes for pork consumers. The second step was to develop a single-score tool named the “Meat quality index”. It has been developed in line with published approaches of different total quality index concepts used in the food sector, providing insights into its application in the meat sector. As a result, this review proposes a unique approach in using quality index application, through the consumer’s preferences aspect of fresh meat.

The role of cooking in consumers' quality formation: An exploratory study of beef steaks

The role of cooking on pre- and post-consumption quality expectations and its impact on satisfaction during the eating experience is under-researched. To address this gap, a ‘task and talk’ focus group study involving participants preparing and eating a beef steak as part of a meal was designed to explore the role of cooking on consumers' evaluation of beef quality. The results from six focus groups (n = 36 participants) identified that ‘perceived cooking quality’ of beef is an important criterion impacting pre-purchase evaluation. Cooking is a process of adaptation to personal tastes and is influenced by cooking self-efficacy. This personal confidence in steak preparation mediates a willingness to directly complain about a disappointing eating experience. Direct complaints generally occurred in relation to intrinsic quality cues prior to cooking where the locus of quality control was external to the participant. Poor eating quality of beef was generally attributed to a deficiency in cooking skills, an internal attribution of quality failure that minimised the likelihood of direct complaints. A lack of confidence in cooking skills may explain a delay in repeat purchasing following a negative eating experience.

Determination of the alterations in quality parameters and consumer preference of dry-aged beef based on different periods of ageing using a purposive incubator

The aim of this study was to evaluate beef quality traits including pH, water holding capacity, cooking loss, meat colour, and Warner-Bratzler shear force in dry-aged beef and to determine the most favorable ageing time based on beef quality parameters and consumer acceptability. In this respect, longissimus dorsi samples were obtained from Simmental bulls and stored for an ageing period up to 21-days, and thus, the beef quality evaluation was performed at 0-day, 7-day, 14-day, and 21-day of the experimental period. Results revealed that the lowest shear force value was observed in beef samples on day-14 whereas the lowest pH value was determined in samples on day 21. Moreover, water holding capacity and beef colour values were significantly differentiated based on dry-ageing (P<0.05). In sensory panel evaluation, a significant difference is found only in meat colour rating (P<0.05). There was no significant difference between ageing periods and cooking loss. The most important technical point is that increasing dry-ageing time from 14 to 21 days did not desirably affect quality traits and sensory scores. Hence, dry-ageing for 14 days seemed to be the most economically efficient application. Taken altogether, the present results suggest that the potential for use of dry-ageing should be considered as an alternative method to produce high-quality beef with respect to the optimum ageing process.

An intelligent machine vision-based smartphone app for beef quality evaluation

Beef tenderness is the most important attribute correlated with beef quality, consumer satisfaction, and purchasing decisions. Nowadays, a rapid, non-invasive, and non-destructive evaluation and prediction of beef tenderness and quality from fresh product attributes is desired in industries, laboratories, and markets dealing with beef handling, processing, analyzing, and buy and sell. In this study, a new machine vision-based smartphone app was developed and verified for the first time in order to predict beef tenderness from fresh beef image captured under uncontrolled conditions. In order to eliminate the effects of uncontrolled imaging conditions, an illumination-, rotation-, scale-, and translation-invariant image processing algorithm was developed so that a common user can easily capture the image of the beef sample with more degree of freedom in terms of luminance, rotation, scale, and translation with no worries about the accuracy of the results. The obtained preprocessed image textural features were well correlated with instrumental data obtained using Warner-Bratzler shear force measurement through artificial neural network technique. The developed android app was installed on a LG G4 H815 smartphone and its performance was assessed using thirty unseen beef samples. The probability of occurrence of 2-D correlation coefficients obtained from the analyses of all the beef samples subjected to the image processing algorithm showed the average probability of 0.92, which strongly supported the robustness of the developed algorithm. The best obtained neural network model could predict the tenderness values with mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 3.28% and coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.97. The app promisingly predicted the beef tenderness values of the unseen samples with mean squared error (MSE) of 3.34, MAPE of 3.74%, and R2 of 0.99. Accordingly, the developed app can be a low-cost and user-friendly tool for predicting beef tenderness and quality from its real-world image.

Органолептическая оценка качества говядины мясных телок различных генотипов

Органолептическая оценка качества говядины мясных телок различных генотипов

CDNA microarray를 이용하여 한우의 근육과 지방조직의 유전자 발현 패턴 분석 및 bovine customer cDNA chip 구성 연구

To investigate the molecular events of controlling intramuscular fat (or marbling), which is an important factor in the evaluation of beef quality, we performed cDNA microarray analyses using the longissimus dorsi muscle and back fat tissues. For this study, we constructed normalized cDNA libraries: fat tissues in native Korean cattle (displaying 1,211 specific genes), and muscle tissues in native Korean cattle (displaying 1,346 specific genes). A bovine cDNA chip was constructed with 1,680 specific genes, consisting of 760 genes from muscle tissues and 920 genes from fat tissues. The microarray analysis in this experiment showed a number of differentially expressed genes, which compared the longissimus dorsi muscle (Cy5) with back fat tissue (Cy3). Among many specific differentially expressed genes, 12-lipoxygenase (oxidizing esterified fatty acids) and prostaglandin D synthase (differentiation of fibroblasts to adipocytes) are the key candidate enzymes that should be involved in controlling the accumulation of intramuscular fat. In this study, differentially and commonly expressed genes in the muscle and fat tissues of native Korean cattle were found in large numbers, using the hybridization assay. The expression levels of the selected genes were confirmed by semi-quantitative RT-PCR, and the results were similar to those of the cDNA microarray.

Kvalita musculus longissimus pars thoracis v těžších kategoriích býků českého strakatého a montbeliárdského plemene

Non-significant differences were established when the nutritional and technological beef quality of Czech Fleckvieh and Montbeliard and their reaction to the end of feeding at the different age and different carcass growth intensity were studied.Bulls were fattened until average weight of 656 kg. Montbeliard beef quality evaluation shown non-significant difference of higher intramuscular fat proportions and energy value compared to Czech Fleckvieh. Technological quality evaluation only indicated the tendency to lighter meat, lower water retention and lower level of hydroxyproline. Slaughter age rising in both breeds (the boundary vas 570 days) resulted in non-significant increasing of intramuscular fat together with significant (P < 0.05) increasing of muscle pigmentation content and non-significant shortening and water retention reduction.Longer fattened bulls at both breeds shown non-significantm.l.th. area reduction at higher difference at Montbeliard. Net gain level as a carcass growth intensity, showed non-significant intramuscular fat production. Higher level of net daily gain produces, particularly at Montbeliards, lead to increasing of hydroxyproline. Higher growth intensity of Czech Fleckvieh influenced pigmentation content increase. Higher growth intensity in both breeds leads to enlarging them.l.th.

Analysis of Volatile and Flavor Compounds in Grilled Lean Beef by Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction and Thermal Desorption—Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

A method of stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) and thermal desorption (TD) with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has been developed for qualitative and quantitative analysis of volatile and flavor compounds in grilled beef. To achieve optimum extraction and analysis performance for volatile and flavor compounds, desorption temperature and solid extraction conditions of the method were studied. Grilled beef and grilled beef dripping were analyzed by the developed method with short analysis program, and a total of 57 volatile (31 flavor) compounds, including 12 aldehydes, 13 hydrocarbons, 12 alcohols and ketones, 9 nitrogen- and sulfur-containing compounds, and 10 pyrazine compounds, were identified with little variation in triplicates. Four typical flavor compounds: hexanal, methional, 2-ethyl-pyrazine, and nonanal, were selected from main flavor group for quantitative analysis, and the method showed good linearity within the tested concentration range from 2 ng/g to 0.2 μg/g (n = 3, RSDs 0.998) and good recovery at 38∼45 % by spiked standards of 100 ng/g (n = 3, RSDs ≤ 11 %) in ground grilled beef. The limits of detection (LOD) range was 0.17–0.26 ng/g (S/N = 3, n = 3), and the limits of quantification (LOQ) range was 0.56–0.88 ng/g (S/N = 9, n = 3) for flavor analysts. The simple, fast, and solvent-less method allows us to obtain reliable qualitative and quantitative data of volatile and flavor constituents which are necessary for the beef quality evaluation.

Cell death-inducing DFFA-like effector c (CIDEC/Fsp27) gene: molecular cloning, sequence characterization, tissue distribution and polymorphisms in Chinese cattles

Cell death-inducing DFFA-like effector c (CIDEC) protein, also known as fat specific protein 27 (Fsp27), is localized to lipid droplets. CIDEC protein is required for unilocular lipid droplet formation and optimal energy storage in addition to controlling lipid metabolism in adipocytes and hepatocytes. Research found that Ad-36 could induce lipid droplets in the cultured skeletal muscle cells and this process may be mediated by promoting CIDEC expression. The content of intermuscular fat is an important index for evaluation of beef quality, so the CIDEC gene appeared to be a candidate gene for regulation of intermuscular fat, however similar research for the bovine CIDEC gene is lacking. This paper examined the tissue expression profile of CIDEC gene in cattle using real-time RT-PCR to suggest that bovine CIDEC is highly expressed in adipose tissue. In addition, the Bovine CIDEC gene was cloned and inserted into the eukaryotic expression vector pET-28a(+), whereupon recombinant bovine CIDEC protein was induced and identified by Western-blot. A phylogenetic analysis showed that the animo acid sequence of bovine CIDEC was closer to mammalian CIDEC than rasorial CIDEC. We found ten single nucleotide polymorphisms sites (SNPs) in bovine CIDEC gene, of which SNP 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9, and SNP 8 and 10 were in complete linkage disequilibrium, respectively. SNP 1, 2 and 10 were used in further haplotype studies. Eight different haplotypes were identified in 973 cattle, of which haplotype 8 predominated with frequencies ranging from 42.90 to 54.30%. This research provides a basis for future functional studies of CIDEC in cattle.

On-line application of visible and near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to predict physical and sensory characteristics of beef quality

Visible and near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (Vis-NIR) has been widely used by the industry research-base for large-scale meat quality evaluation to predict the chemical composition of meat quickly and accurately. Meat tenderness is measured by means of slow and destructive methods (e.g. Warner-Bratzler shear force). Similarly, sensory analysis, using trained panellists, requires large meat samples and is a complex, expensive and time-consuming technique. Nevertheless, these characteristics are important criteria that affect consumers’ evaluation of beef quality. Vis-NIR technique provides information about the molecular bonds (chemical constituents) and tissue ultra-structure in a scanned sample and thus can indirectly predict physical or sensory parameters of meat samples. Applications of Vis-NIR spectroscopy in an abattoir for prediction of physical and sensory characteristics have been less developed than in other fields. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test the on-line Vis-NIR spectroscopy for the prediction of beef quality characteristics such as colour, instrumental texture, water holding capacity (WHC) and sensory traits, by direct application of a fibre-optic probe to the M. longissimus thoracis with no prior sample treatment.