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

Abstract

The mineral profile of beef is a subject of human health interest, but also animal performance and meat quality. This study analyzes the relationships of 20 minerals in beef inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) with three animal performance and 13 beef quality traits analyzed on 182 samples of Longissimus thoracis. Animals’ breed and sex showed limited effects. The major sources of variation (farm/date of slaughter, individual animal within group and side/sample within animal) differed greatly from trait to trait. Mineral contents were correlated to animal performance and beef quality being significant 52 out of the 320 correlations at the farm/date level, and 101 out of the 320 at the individual animal level. Five latent factors explained 69% of mineral co-variation. The most important, “Mineral quantity” factor correlated with age at slaughter and with the beef color traits. Two latent factors (“Na + Fe + Cu” and “Fe + Mn”) correlated with performance and beef color traits. Two other (“K-B-Pb” and “Zn”) correlated with beef chemical composition and the latter also with carcass weight and daily gain, and beef color traits. Beef cooking losses correlated with “K-B-Pb”. Latent factor analysis appears be a useful means of disentangling the very complex relationships that the minerals in beef have with animal performance and beef quality traits.

Purebreeding with sexed semen and crossbreeding with semen from double-muscled sires to improve beef production from dairy herds: Live and slaughter performances of crossbred calves

“…In the survey of Piemontese young bulls, the variability for SEUROP score was similar to that found in this study, whereas variability was higher than in this study for carcass weight and, especially, age at slaughter (Savoia et al, 2019b). Slightly higher than in this study was also the farm effect found in a survey on Chianina and Romagnola young bulls and heifers slaughtered according to the protected designation of origin of "Vitellone bianco dell'Appennino Centrale" by the European Union (Patel et al, 2019).…”

Current Knowledge on River Buffalo Meat: A Critical Analysis

“…The selenium content in buffalo meat is comparable to that reported for beef [101] and could be increased by dietary strategies [109,110] to produce Se-enriched functional meat. Studies on mineral content in buffalo meat, apart from its importance in human nutrition, would be important to clarify its role in animal performance and beef quality traits, as demonstrated in bovine breeds [109,111]. Meat is rich in vitamins, which are essential nutrients involved in biological functions.…”

Multivariate Relationships among Carcass Traits and Proximate Composition, Lipid Profile, and Mineral Content of Longissimus lumborum of Grass-Fed Male Cattle Produced under Tropical Conditions

“…These researchers employed the principal components analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), an appropriate example of the applicability of this type of statistical approach. Similarly, Patel et al [33] used multivariate analyses to explore the relationship among animal and carcass characteristics, beef (longissimus thoracis) quality traits, and lean meat mineral composition (20 elements). In this case, the researchers employed a combination of univariate (simple correlation) and multivariate (factorial analysis) techniques that allowed them to compare the relationship between minerals, not only individually but also in a factorial fashion (five factors) with the animal/carcass performance and the beef quality traits.…”

“…In this case, the researchers employed a combination of univariate (simple correlation) and multivariate (factorial analysis) techniques that allowed them to compare the relationship between minerals, not only individually but also in a factorial fashion (five factors) with the animal/carcass performance and the beef quality traits. This study [33] only included the carcass weight as one of the three performance characteristics. Both previous investigations [32,33] indicate the need for studying complex relationships employing a multivariate approach, that may include a large number of variables.…”

“…This study [33] only included the carcass weight as one of the three performance characteristics. Both previous investigations [32,33] indicate the need for studying complex relationships employing a multivariate approach, that may include a large number of variables. In this case the Canonical Correlation analysis (CCA), offers a promising multivariate method to complement other techniques.…”