Bibliometric Analysis of Research on the Main Genes Involved in Meat Tenderness

Abstract

Tenderness is one of the main characteristics of meat because it determines its price and acceptability. This is the first bibliometric study on the trend of research on the role of genes in meat tenderness. A total of 175 original and English-language articles published up to 2021 were retrieved from Scopus. The bibliometric analysis was carried out with VOSviewer (version 1.6.18, Eck and Waltman, Leiden, Netherlands) and complemented with the Analyze search results service from Scopus. Erroneous and duplicate data were eliminated, and incomplete information was added to standardize the results. Scientific production was evaluated by means of quantity, quality and structure indicators. As a first glance, 8.816% of authors have published more than 50% of papers mainly related to genes encoding the calpain (CAPN)-calpastatin (CAST) system and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Among other findings, a strong link was found between the contribution of the main countries (led by the United States with) and their institutions (led by the USDA Agricultural Research Service with) to their gross domestic product. Most studies on the topic are published in the Journal of Animal Science, and other journals with high impact according to the number of citations and different metrics. Finally, when evaluating the most cited articles, the occurrence and association of the main keywords, it was confirmed that research is focused on the role of CAPN and CAST genes and of SNPs in beef tenderness. The change in science was emphasized; although marker-assisted selection is still used, genes have an infinitesimal effect on complex traits. Therefore, since about 2010, new research groups adopted genomic selection to evaluate dense panels of SNPs and better explain genetic variation in meat tenderness.

Worldwide research on the health effects of bovine milk containing A1 and A2 β-casein: Unraveling the current scenario and future trends through bibliometrics and text mining

“…No country in Africa or South America has scientific production, except for French Guiana, which is administered by France. Considering that the topic is related to the biotechnological field, this can be associated with the results obtained in a previous study ( Gonzales-Malca et al, 2022 ). The interest in biotechnological development in countries is associated with their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).…”

“…The Scopus database was selected because of its broad content and great accessibility ( Gonzales-Malca et al, 2022 ) and because it was not used in the only bibliometric study on the topic ( Jiménez-Montenegro et al, 2022 ). In order to extract all relevant studies, it is essential to use a well-structured research protocol, so based on de Gaudry et al (2022) , several related terms were chosen and four search strings were constructed ( Table 1 ).…”

“…Bibliometric analysis is more methodical, objective and reproducible than literature reviews and systematic reviews ( Mahi et al, 2021 ). Bibliometrics provides a scientific mapping of a large number of documents to fully and simultaneously explore the intellectual structure and dynamic aspects of knowledge ( Gonzales-Malca et al, 2022 ; Tirado-Kulieva et al, 2022a ; Zapata-Mendoza et al, 2022 ). To our knowledge, there is one bibliometric study on A2 bovine milk ( Jiménez-Montenegro et al, 2022 ), but it only collected papers from the Web of Science database (WoS) database and focused mainly on intellectual structure.…”

Polymorphism of Genes and Their Impact on Beef Quality

“…Out of the group of genes on which research has been conducted for decades, most of the work focused on calpains (CAPN) and calpastatins (CAST), which are the CAPN inhibitors. From 1993 to 2021, there were at least 175 English-language papers related to the topic [ 85 ]. This is a clear signal that work should be conducted to analyze the factors affecting meat quality, in particular tenderness (associated both with CAST [ 86 ] and CAPN1 [ 87 , 88 ]), which is the most important determinant of the customers’ willingness to buy.…”