Beef-on-dairy: Meat quality of veal and prediction of intramuscular fat using the Q-FOM™ Beef camera at the 5th–6th thoracic vertebra

This study aims to describe the meat quality of young Holstein (HOL) beef-on-dairy heifers and bulls sired by Angus (ANG, n = 109), Charolais (CHA, n = 101) and Danish Blue (DBL, n = 127), and to investigate the performance of the handheld vision-based Q-FOM™ Beef camera in predicting the intramuscular fat concentration (IMF%) in M. longissimus thoracis from carcasses quartered at the 5th–6th thoracic vertebra. The results showed significant differences between crossbreeds and sexes on carcass characteristics and meat quality. DBL × HOL had the highest EUROP conformation scores, whereas ANG × HOL had darker meat with higher IMF% (3.52%) compared to CHA × HOL (2.99%) and DBL × HOL (2.51%). Bulls had higher EUROP conformation scores than heifers, and heifers had higher IMF% (3.70%) than bulls (2.31%). These findings indicate the potential for producing high-quality meat from beef-on-dairy heifers and ANG bulls. The IMF% prediction model for Q-FOM performed well with R 2 = 0.91 and root mean squared error of cross validation, RMSECV = 1.33%. The performance of the prediction model on the beef-on-dairy veal subsample ranging from 0.9 to 7.4% IMF had lower accuracy (R 2 = 0.48) and the prediction error (RMSE veal) was 1.00%. When grouping beef-on-dairy veal carcasses into three IMF% classes (2.5% IMF bins), 62.6% of the carcasses were accurately predicted. Furthermore, Q-FOM IMF% predictions and chemically determined IMF% were similar for each combination of sex and crossbreed, revealing a potential of Q-FOM IMF% predictions to be used in breeding, when aiming for higher meat quality.