With rapid advances in meat science in recent decades, changes in meat quality
during the pre-slaughter phase of muscle growth and the post-slaughter process
from muscle to meat have been investigated. Commonly used techniques have
evolved from early physicochemical indicators such as meat color, tenderness,
water holding capacity, flavor, and pH to various omic tools such as genomics,
transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics to explore fundamental molecular
mechanisms and screen biomarkers related to meat quality and taste
characteristics. This review highlights the application of omics and integrated
multi-omics in meat quality and taste characteristics studies. It also discusses
challenges and future perspectives of multi-omics technology to improve meat
quality and taste. Consequently, multi-omics techniques can elucidate the
molecular mechanisms responsible for changes of meat quality at transcriptome,
proteome, and metabolome levels. In addition, the application of multi-omics
technology has great potential for exploring and identifying biomarkers for meat
quality and quality control that can make it easier to optimize production
processes in the meat industry.