How muscle structure and composition determine meat quality

Abstract

Skeletal muscle is composed of several tissues, such as muscle fibers, connective and adipose tissues. This review describes the features of these various muscle components and their relationships with the technological and sensory properties of meat from different livestock species. Thus, the contractile and metabolic types, the size and the number of muscle fibers, the content, composition and distribution of the connective tissue in the muscles, as well as the content and lipid composition of intramuscular fat all contribute to meat appearance, color, tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. However, the biochemical and structural characteristics of muscle fibers, intramuscular connective tissue and intramuscular fat seem to be rather independent. This suggests that the properties of these various muscle components can be modulated independently by genetics or environmental factors in order to achieve both production efficiency and quality of meat.