Consumer Sensory Evaluation and Quality Prediction Model Construction for 9 Kinds of Chinese Yellow Cattle Snowflake Beef

In order to explore the quality characteristics and understand the market position and development direction of Chinese yellow cattle beef, consumer sensory evaluation including fresh beef, pan-fried steaks and instant-boiled slices of nine kinds of native A3 grade yellow cattle beef were carried out with the imported snowflake beef as control group. The results showed that there was no significant difference in juicy, taste, tenderness, color, residue and aroma scores of the pan-fried steaks between longissimus dorsi of Jiaxian red cattle, Xinjiang brown cattle, Bohai black cattle and A3 grade imported snowflake beef (P>0.05). All nine kinds of native yellow cattle instant-boiled slices from biceps femoris could reach the level of imported snow beef, among which the scores of Bohai black cattle, Pingliang red cattle, Yunling cattle, Yiling cattle, Jinnan cattle were significantly higher than those of imported snowflake beef (P<0.05). Comparing the sensory evaluation results of fresh and cooked beef, it was found that the correlation between them was low (r=0.345). It indicated that there was a certain error in determining the beef quality grade only based on the appearance of fresh beef. Therefore, physiochemical properties were measured and the linear regression analysis of physiochemical properties and sensory scores was conducted further in order to construct beef quality prediction model. The results showed that the overall acceptability of fresh steak =6.382−0.132×protein content, and the overall acceptability of fried meat =4.751−0.228×shear force. The regression equation of fresh steak could explain 81.2% of the dependent variable variation, and the pan-fried steaks one could explain 62.6% of the dependent variable variation. Accordingly, protein content and shear force were selected as evaluation indicators fresh and pan-fried beef respectively, which would provide new reference for beef quality evaluation.