Discrimination study between carcass yield and meat quality by gender in Korean native cattle (Hanwoo)

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify a distribution pattern of meat quality grade (MQG) as a function of carcass yield index (CYI) and the gender of Hanwoo (bull, cow, and steer) to determine the optimum point between both yield and quality. We also attempted to identify how pre- and post-deboning variables affect the gender-specific beef quality of Hanwoo.

Methods: A total of 31 deboning variables, consisting of 7 pre-deboning and 24 post-deboning variables from bulls (n = 139), cows (n = 69), and steers (n = 153), were obtained from the National Institute of Animal Science (NIAS) in South Korea. The database was reconstructed to be suitable for a statistical significance test between the CYI and the MQG as well as classification of meat quality. Discriminant function analysis was used for classifying MQG using the deboning parameters of Hanwoo by gender.

Results: The means of CYI according to 1+, 1, 2, and 3 of MQG were 68.64±2.02, 68.85±1.94, 68.62±5.88, and 70.99±3.32, respectively. High carcass yield correlated with low-quality grade, while high-quality meat most frequently was obtained from steers. The classification ability of pre-deboning parameters was higher than that of post-deboning parameters. Moisture and the shear force were the common significant parameters in all discriminant functions having a classification accuracy of 80.6%, 71%, and 56.9% for the bull, cow, and steer, respectively.

Conclusion: This study provides basic information for predicting the meat quality by gender using pre-deboning variables consistent with the actual grading index.

Keywords: Carcass Grade; Carcass Yield; Discriminant Function Analysis; Hanwoo; Meat Quality.

Figure 1

Comparison of the means of the carcass yield index grouping by the meat quality grade. Different alphabets on the bar indicate that the group mean is different, suggesting the grade 3 is significantly different from grade 1+, 1, and 2, while grade 1+, 1, and 2 are not different with each other.

Figure 2

Pie chart showing the distribution of the meat quality grade according to the gender. Numbers in the pie chart indicate the number of 1+, 1, 2, and 3 grades in bulls, cows, and steers with their portions in percentage.