Relationship between in vivo predicted and laboratory determined intramuscular fat content in bulls of different breeds

Abstract

The possibility of in vivo carcass quality prediction in breeding process using ultrasound method was studied. Attention was paid to marbling and intramuscular fat content prediction and the effect of breed and age on prediction accuracy was evaluated. The study was carried out on 75 bulls (38 Slovak Simmental, 14 Beef Polled Simmental and 23 Charolais). The ultrasound machine ALOKA SSD-500 with 3.5 MHz / 172 mm probe was used. Ultrasound images were obtained from the site between 12th and 13th rib one week before slaughter. Statistical evaluation was performed using special software for computer image analysis and SAS software for statistical evaluation were performed. When data on whole dataset were considered, the correlations between marbling determined by photography (MARB) and intramuscular fat content determined by ultrasound (SONO) (0.19 – 0.41) and correlations between sonographic image values (SONO) and laboratory determined intramuscular fat content (IMF) (0.11 – 0.47) were statistically significant. The correlation between MARB and IMF (0.47) was at a very high level of statistical significance. When data on Slovak Simmental bulls group were considered, statistically significant correlations were observed between SONO and MARB values (0.35 – 0.54) and SONO and IMF values (0.50 – 0.59). The correlation between MARB and IMF (0.47) was also statistically significant. Non-significant correlation coefficients were calculated when data on Beef Polled Simmental and Charolais bulls group were considered.