Table 1.

Carcass characteristics and early postmortem meat quality traits of Pietrain- and Duroc-sired pigs collected on the ventral side of the longissimus muscle

	Sire
Item	Pietrain	Duroc	SEM	P value
Pigs, n	80	80
Carcass characteristics
Ending live wt, kg	130.87	130.69	3.28	0.88
Hot carcass wt, kg	103.20	103.66	2.58	0.66
Carcass yield, %	78.82	79.31	0.12	<0.01
10th rib fat thickness, cm	1.60	1.93	0.14	<0.001
Loin muscle area, cm2	55.58	55.40	0.98	0.85
Standardized fat-free lean, %1	55.76	54.36	0.71	<0.001
Canadian back loin (NAMP #414) wt, kg	3.86	3.87	0.09	0.93
% chilled carcass wt	7.52	7.50	0.07	0.89
Early postmortem ventral quality traits2
Instrumental color3
Lightness, L*	48.33	48.09	0.86	0.60
Redness, a*	10.10	10.01	0.61	0.69
Yellowness, b*	3.52	3.13	0.46	0.07
Subjective evaluations4
Visual color score	3.43	3.44	0.06	0.88
Visual marbling score	1.76	2.15	0.14	<0.01
Firmness score	3.64	3.56	0.05	0.21
Ventral loin pH5	5.53	5.57	0.02	<0.001

¹Standardized fat-free lean = ([8.588 + {0.465 × HCW, lb} − {21.896 × fat depth, in} + {3.005 × longissimus thoracis area, in²}]/HCW) × 100 (Burson and Berg, 2001).

²Ventral quality was evaluated on the exposed lean tissue (epimysium removed) of loins exposed to oxygen for at least 20 min.

³L* measures darkness to lightness (greater L* indicates a lighter color), a* measures redness (greater a* indicates a redder color), and b* measures yellowness (greater b* indicates a more yellow color).

⁴Evaluations based on NPPC (1991, 1999) standards, where 1 = visually palest color and 6 = visually darkest color; 1 = visually the least marbling and 6 = visually the most marbling; and 1 = softest and 6 = firmest.

⁵Loin pH was measured on the ventral surface of the boneless loins at the area of the 10th rib.