Tenderness and Textural Analysis Posters

Enhancing and understanding the tenderness of beef has been an on-going research topic. Recently, injection of compounds into fresh beef muscle is an active area of research. In this preliminary study, four cows of E maturity were the source of eight strip loins. The steaks from the strip loins were split into treatment groups and injected at 24 hours postmortem to a 10% level (v/w) with one of the following: 1) water, 2) NaCVsodium tripolyphosphate, 3) CaCI,, and 4) NaCV sodium tripolyphosphate/CaCI,. Warner-Bratzler shear force measurements, myofibril fragmentation index (MFI) values and SDS-PAGE data were collected at 3 and 7 days post-mortem. The results indicated that injection with NaCUsodium tripolyphosphate, CaCI, or NaCVsodium tripolyphosphatdCaC1, resulted in lower Warner-Bratzler shear force values than obtained in the water-injected control. Injection with the two NaCV tripolyphosphate-containing solutions appeared to have only limited effects on post-mortem proteolysis as examined by MFI values and SDS-PAGE analysis techniques. Injection with CaCI, alone caused increased proteolysis as shown by MFI and SDS-PAGE. These preliminary results suggest that different post-mortem tenderization mechanisms may occur by using these post-mortem injection treatments.