Sensory evaluations of porcine longissimus dorsi muscle: Relationships with postmortem meat quality traits and muscle fiber characteristics

The objective of this study was to investigate sensory evaluations and their relationships with meat quality measurements and histochemical characteristics in both fresh and cooked pork. Based on the results, postmortem meat quality traits were closely related to almost all the evaluated sensory attributes. With regard to histochemical characteristics, muscle fiber area was related to both fresh- (r = 0.18, P < 0.05) and cooked-meat color (r = −0.24, P < 0.01) as well as abnormal flavor intensity (r = 0.25, P < 0.01), and muscle fiber composition was associated with fresh pork color and taste acceptability after cooking. There were no significant relationships (P > 0.05) between type IIa muscle fiber content and the evaluated sensory attributes; however, good meat sensory quality was partially explained by the percentage of type I fiber.