Heritability Estimates of Certain Meat Characteristics in Eight-Week Old Chickens

One thousand 8-week old broilers, representing commercial male and female lines, were measured for eviscerated weight, cooking losses, Allo-Kramer shear values, color and total moisture content of breast and thigh meat. Estimates of heritability were obtained from variance components analyses based on a nested hierarchy. Eviscerated weight appeared to be lowly heritable in both lines. Extremely low estimates of heritability were obtained in both lines for the percentages of volatile and drip losses. Shear values of the raw breast, raw thigh and cooked thigh in the male line and, to a lesser extent, the shear value of the raw thigh in the female line yielded moderately high estimates of heritability. Total moisture content appeared to be lowly heritable in both lines. The inheritance of meat color, as measured by the Gardiner Color Difference Meter, varied considerably with the L value of the raw breast and raw thigh yielding estimates of 0.42. Environmental bias, due to commercial processing procedures and cooking method, must be reduced in order to obtain a more accurate appraisal of genetic contribution to meat quality in poultry.