Consistency statistics and genetic parameters for taste panel assessed meat quality traits and their relationship with carcass quality traits in a commercial population of Angus-sired beef cattle

Abstract

Sensory traits, such as juiciness and tenderness, are known to be important to the consumer and thus will influence their consumption of meat, specifically beef. These traits are difficult to measure and often require the use of taste panels to assess the complex parameters involved in the eating experience. Such panels are potentially a large source of measurement error, which may reduce the effectiveness of breeding programmes based on the data they generate. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of such taste panel-derived sensory traits as well as calculating genetic parameters and residual correlations for these traits along with a further set of traditional carcass quality traits. The study examined a sample of 443 Aberdeen Angus-cross animals collected from 14 breeder-finisher farms throughout Scotland. To assess the quality of the taste panel measurements, three consistency statistics were calculated: (i) panel-member consistency, i.e. the extent to which an individual panel member varied in their scoring for a given trait over the period of the experiment; (ii) repeatability, i.e. the consistency with which an individual panel member was able to score a trait on repeated samples from the same animal; and (iii) reproducibility, i.e. the extent to which taste panel members agreed with each other when scoring a trait. These consistency statistics were moderately high, particularly for panel-member consistency and reproducibility, with values ranging from 0.48 to 0.81 and 0.43 to 0.73 respectively. Estimated heritabilities were low for most of the sensory taste-panel-evaluated traits where the maximum value was 0.16 for overall liking. Residual correlations were high between many of the closely related sensory traits, although few significant correlations were found between the carcass quality data and meat quality traits.

The eating quality of beef from young dairy bulls derived from two breed types at three ages from two different production systems

“…Roast beef flavour was positively correlated with juiciness (P < 0.01), in agreement with the result of Monteiro et al (2013). A positive correlation was also observed between roast beef flavour and initial tenderness score (P < 0.05), which was in accordance with the finding by Gill et al (2010). This effect could be due to the "halo effect", i.e.…”

“…Likewise, initial tenderness had a high positive relationship with ease of disintegration and negative relationships with cohesiveness, chewiness and stringiness (P < 0.001). It seems that when a panellist rated a piece of tender meat, he/she was also prone to giving higher scores to other traits, particularly the unrelated ones, such as flavour (Gill et al, 2010).…”

Inter-laboratory assessment by trained panelists from France and the United Kingdom of beef cooked at two different end-point temperatures

“…Except for one data set (the French protocol with beef from young bulls cooked at 346 55°C), normal and abnormal beef flavour were negatively correlated. Similar findings were 347 reported in other studies with beef Gill et al, 2010) and lamb 348 (Karamichou, Richardson, Nute, Wood & Bishop, 2007). These relationships may result from 349 lipid-dependent mechanisms of flavour and aroma development during cooking, storage or 350 processing (Calkins & Hodgen, 2007;Elmore & Mottram, 2009;Mottram, 1998).…”

“…The weak negative correlation between tenderness and abnormal beef flavour observed for 352 samples from bulls cooked at 74°C and assessed using the UK protocol has not been reported (Gill et al, 2010). Tenderness and juiciness traits are of great importance when assessing beef 362 meat .…”

Sensory quality of meat from eight different types of cattle in relation with their biochemical characteristics

“…the perceived level of a sensory quality is influenced by 214 another sensory quality (Gill et al 2010). In bulls, abnormal beef flavour scores were relatively 215 high compared to heifers and steers.…”