Relationships between intramuscular fat and pork quality, fatty acid composition of pig longissimus muscle

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between intramuscular fat content and meat quality and fatty acid composition.The longissimus muscles from Beijing black pig (n=20) were measured for their meat quality parameters and fatty acid composition.Results showed that intramuscular fat content and drip loss was significantly positively correlated (p<0.05) , while the correlation between cooking loss, shear force and color was not significant (p>0.05) .With increasing intramuscular fat content, all fatty acid contents as well as the relative proportion increased except for the long-chain unsaturated fatty acids (C_20:3n6, C_20:4n6) ;The content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) increased, but the relative proportion declined;The content and the proportion of long-chain PUFAs both decreased.With the rise of intramuscular fat, saturated fatty acids (SFAs) and monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) increased significantly, and the regression equation slopes were 197.3 and 248.31 respectively.Meanwhile, the content of PUFAs increased slightly, the slope of the regression equation was 11.43.In conclusion, these results indicated that lower intramuscular fat content, average 2.86%in this study, had no significant effects on the meat quality.With increasing intramuscular fat content, the total fatty acids (TFAs) content increased, mainly due to the increase in SFAs and MUFAs content.The PUFAs content was relatively stable andit was little affected by changes in intramuscular fat content.