Relationships between sensory and objective measures of meat tenderness of beef m. longissimus thoracis from bulls and steers

This study assessed whether relationships between sensory and objective measures of beef tenderness were different for beef from bulls and steers. Trained panelists and instruments were used to measure tenderness of m. longissimus thoracis from bulls (n=58) and steers (n=59). Four measures of sensory tenderness (hardness, cohesiveness, toughness and chewiness) were closely correlated with each other, and moderately correlated with mechanical measures using a Warner–Bratzler device, a MIRINZ tenderometer and a compression cell in an Instron device. With increasing values of objective measures, sensory scores increased at a decreasing rate. Use of a general-least-squares model with sensory measures as the dependent variable and objective measures as covariates (linear and quadratic), showed that, after adjustment to a constant objective measure, significant differences between bulls and steers in sensory measures of toughness remained (P<0.001). Adjusted sensory measures also decreased with increasing ultimate pH in some instances. The bull/steer effects on adjusted sensory measures were smaller when regressions were fitted within the two groups. It is concluded that when using a common prediction equation to estimate sensory scores from objective measures, it can be expected that groups or individual samples with higher scores will tend to be under-estimated, and those with lower scores, over-estimated.