Prediction of meat quality traits in the abattoir using portable and hand-held near-infrared spectrometers

Relationships of a Detailed Mineral Profile of Meat with Animal Performance and Beef Quality

“…In a very large survey carried out on another Italian beef breed (Piemontese) reared in north-west Italy in accordance with another set of PGI regulations [29], the authors were able to disentangle the effect of farm from that of date of slaughter, and found that the latter was often more important than the former. They also noted that the variation between individual farms within a common beef farming system is often more important than the variation between different farming systems [30]. Our results clearly show that a first level of analysis of the relationships between beef quality and the mineral profile should be the farm/date level.…”

Predicting the Content of 20 Minerals in Beef by Different Portable Near-Infrared (NIR) Spectrometers

“…Overall, the spectrum shows the typical spectral signature of meat tissue, characterized mainly by the protein, lipid, water, and pigment vibrational signal areas. The pattern of our beef spectra was generally similar to that previously reported for beef samples [ 13 , 24 , 25 ].…”

“…There are several other recent studies on the accuracy of predicting meat characteristics using NIR spectroscopy [ 26 , 27 ]. The best results were obtained predicting the chemical composition of organic matter of meat and the color traits, whereas modest results were obtained for the other physical traits, such as drip and cooking losses and meat tenderness [ 13 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. Although prediction of mineral content is mainly correlative in nature, several studies on NIRS predictions of minerals have been published in the field of food and agriculture [ 3 , 31 ].…”

“…One such technique is near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which is well-known for being a rapid, non-invasive, non-destructive means of measuring multiple beef quality traits, and for being ecofriendly and inexpensive [ 8 ]. It is used for predicting beef chemical composition [ 9 , 10 ], and for determining fatty acid profiles [ 11 ] and physical traits, such as color, tenderness, and drip and cooking water losses [ 12 , 13 ]. NIRS is a method that is sensitive to hetero atomic covalent bonds; therefore, it is not sensitive to metals.…”

“…However, these problems could be overcome by the use of robust, portable NIR instruments to collect spectra directly on the meat surface at the abattoir or processing plant without the need to take meat samples. Rapid developments in the field of optics, and advances in the miniaturization of infrared detector components mean that cheaper, transportable/portable/hand-held NIR spectrometers for instant analysis are now available [ 13 , 17 , 18 ]. However, the reduction in size presents a challenge to spectral performance in terms of wavelength range, resolution, and signal-to-noise ratio.…”