Longissimus from Berkshire pigs in a small-scale supply chain have increased oxidative metabolism, tenderness and water-holding capacity, compared with Large White × Landrace pigs in a modern commercial supply chain

Michelle Nicole LeMaster; Darryl Nicholas D’Souza; Robert John Edward Hewitt; Surinder Singh Chauhan; Minh Ha; Linton George Leon Batt; Frank Rowland Dunshea; Robyn Dorothy Warner

doi:10.1071/AN24132

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Longissimus from Berkshire pigs in a small-scale supply chain have increased oxidative metabolism, tenderness and water-holding capacity, compared with Large White × Landrace pigs in a modern commercial supply chain

Michelle Nicole LeMaster ^A , Darryl Nicholas D’Souza ^B , Robert John Edward Hewitt

^B , Surinder Singh Chauhan

^A , Minh Ha ^A ^E , Linton George Leon Batt ^C , Frank Rowland Dunshea ^A ^D and Robyn Dorothy Warner

^A ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A School of Agriculture, Food, and Ecosystem Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic 3010, Australia.

^B SunPork Group, Eagle Farm, Qld 4009, Australia.

^C National Livestock Solutions, 49 Emungalen Road, Katherine, NT 0850, Australia.

^D Faculty of Biological Sciences, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

^E Present address: v2food, 10-20 Gwynne Street, Cremorne, Vic 3121, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: rwarner@unimelb.edu.au

Handling Editor: Roger Purchas

Animal Production Science 64, AN24132 https://doi.org/10.1071/AN24132

Submitted: 18 April 2024 Accepted: 14 October 2024 Published: 11 November 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Context

Selection for leanness in the modern Australian pig has resulted in inconsistent quality, including a lack of pork tenderisation during ageing. Inconsistent quality is potentially a result of differences in supply chain and breed as well as the variation in muscle fibre-type proportion in pork longissimus.

Aim

The aim was to investigate differences in fibre-type proportion and pork quality between Large White-Landrace pigs in a large supply chain and Berkshire pigs processed in a small supply chain.

Methods

Pigs (n = 22) from two suppliers with different breeds (Supplier 1, Large White × Landrace, SC1-LWLR, n = 12, modern commercial pigs; Supplier 2, Berkshire, SC2-Berk, n = 10, heritage pigs) were slaughtered and samples from the longissimus were extracted at 3, 24, and 48 h postmortem for enzyme and pH analyses. Longissimus samples were subjected to ageing for either 2 or 16 days postmortem (Day 2, Day 16), assessed for colour, muscle fibre-type proportion (%), muscle fibre diameter (μm), water-holding capacity (purge, % and cook loss, %), Warner–Bratzler peak shear force (WBSF, N), and protein denaturation temperature using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC, peak temperature, °C).

Key results

SC1-LWLR had higher purge than SC2-Berk (2.85% and 1.83% respectively; standard error of the difference (SED) = 0.33; P = 0.003), higher cook loss on Day 16 (24.63% and 16.79% respectively; SED = 1.62; P = 0.017) and higher WBSF on Day 2 and Day 16 (Day 2, 30.9 N and 26.7 N respectively; Day 16, 28.6 N and 22.0 N respectively; SED = 0.98, interaction P = 0.003). SC1-LWLR had a lower proportion of Type I (10.1% vs 16.0%; SED = 0.51) and Type IIA (14.0% vs 22.0%; SED = 0.77) and a higher proportion of Type IIB (75.9% vs 62.0%; SED = 0.74) (P < 0.001 for all) fibres. SC1-LWLR had lower DSC temperatures for two peaks. SC2-Berk had higher citrate synthase activity (P = 0.003) and glycolytic potential (P < 0.001) than SC1-LWLR.

Conclusions

SC2-Berk longissimus had improved quality compared with SC1-LWLR pork, most likely owing, in part, to higher proportion of oxidative and intermediate fibres in the Berkshires. However, effects of differences in environmental conditions and/or processing conditions cannot be ruled out.

Implications

The experiment increased our understanding of how variation in supply chains and muscle fibre-type proportion can impact the production of consistently high-quality pork.

Keywords: Berkshire, breed, cook loss, Large White × Landrace, muscle fibre type, oxidative capacity, pork, protein denaturation, supply chain, WBSF.

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