Predicting intramuscular fat content and marbling score of pork along the longissimus muscle based on the last rib

The possibility of using IMF content/MS at the last rib to predict the corresponding fat attribute of loin chops at the 2nd last to the 7th last thoracic ribs and the mean of IMF content/MS of the whole loin joint was investigated. Linear and quadratic regression, cross-validation analysis and analysis of variance were employed for the study. For either IMF or MS, linear and quadratic regression models had similar performance. The best mean correlation coefficients of calibration (R-c) of 0.91 and cross-validation (R-v) of 0.88 were obtained for linear regression model of IMF content of the whole loin, while R-c of 0.90 and R-v of 0.88 were obtained for quadratic regression model of MS of the whole loin. The results indicated that IMF content and MS at the last rib had great potential for the prediction of IMF content and MS at the other ribs.