Table 3.

The meat quality characteristics in LTL muscle of O and AHO lambs.

Item	O	AHO	p-value
pH (45 min)	6.25 ± 0.10	6.38 ± 0.13	0.457
pH (24 h)	5.88 ± 0.16	5.87 ± 0.19	0.970
Meat color a*	8.91 ± 1.18	8.97 ± 0.75	0.962
Meat color b*	6.59 ± 0.86	7.48 ± 0.61	0.413
Meat color L*	28.23 ± 1.76	30.19 ± 1.33	0.394
Cooking loss (%)	43.85 ± 1.73	44.62 ± 0.71	0.666
Crude protein (%)	19.43 ± 0.62	19.36 ± 0.43	0.932
Total lipid content (%)	5.53 ± 0.07	3.98 ± 0.68	0.104

AHO: Australian White × Small-tailed Han × Oura-type Tibetan three-way crossbred sheep; O: Oura-type Tibetan sheep; ^a,b different letters indicate significant differences between two groups (p < 0.05). Data were represented as means ± SEM.