NONDESTRUCTIVE PREDICTION OF SELECTED QUALITY ATTRIBUTES OF BEEF BY NEAR-INFRARED REFLECTANCE SPECTROSCOPY BETWEEN 750 AND 1098 NM

Heifers (n = 70) were slaughtered and hung conventionally in an indust rial meat plant. Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was studied for its ability to predict selected meat quality attributes, i.e. Warner-Bratz ler shear force (WBSF), sensory tenderness, texture, flavour and accep tability. Freshly cut steaks (2.5 cm thick) were taken from the longis simus dorsi (LD) muscle at 1, 2, 7 and 14 days post mortem for NIR ana lysis. Other samples (also 2.5 cm thick) were taken at 2, 7 and 14 day s post mortem, vacuum-packaged in plastic bags and stored at -20 degre es C for WBSF measurement and sensory analysis. Heifers were slaughter ed in two groups; between slaughterings, replacement of the spectropho tometer lamp and lamp assembly was necessitated by a bulb failure. Usi ng principal component regression (PCR), correlation coefficients of 0 .82 and 0.73 were obtained for the prediction of WBSF in sample sets I and 2, respectively. On merging both sample sets, this value was lowe red slightly (r=0.61). Correlation coefficients obtained for the predi ction of tenderness, texture, flavour and acceptability were 0.67, 0.5 3, 0.51 and 0.46 respectively (set 1); 0.72, 0.71, 0.45 and 0.67 (set 2); 0.53, 0.54, 0.24 and 0.42 (combined sets). (C) 1998 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.