Table 7. Effect of fattening period on physicochemical characteristics of longissimus dorsi muscle in Holstein steers.

Item	20 mon	21 mon	22 mon	23 mon	24 mon	SEM	p-value1)
Moisture (%)	66.74	66.51	66.64	66.92	67.59	0.86	0.4482
Crude fat (%)	11.34	11.76	10.86	11.53	10.78	0.94	0.1865
Crude protein (%)	20.06	20.01	20.80	20.24	20.91	0.36	0.2159
CIE value
L*	38.02ab	41.33a	38.66ab	40.27ab	36.74b	1.10	0.0890
a*	19.86	21.01	20.42	21.03	21.88	0.78	0.4947
b*	8.19b	9.82a	8.96ab	9.78a	9.18ab	0.47	0.1431
Chroma	21.49	23.20	22.31	23.21	23.73	0.89	0.4674
Hue	22.21b	25.03a	23.63ab	24.79a	22.58b	0.50	0.0013
Cooking loss	30.81	31.11	31.59	30.39	31.85	0.21	0.2316

¹⁾Probability of the F-test.

^a,bMeans in the same row with different superscripts are significantly different (p < 0.05).