A Histological Study of Turkey Meat as Related to Sensory Characteristics

INTRODUCTION DIFFERENCES in meat tenderness due to age, sex, breed, etc. have been attributed to differences in connective tissue. However, muscle fibers, which constitute the bulk of the muscle mass, must also be very important in meat quality. Sarcomere length, which measures the degree of muscle contraction, was first suggested by Locker (1960) as being associated with tenderness. Its usefulness as a predictor of tenderness is therefore of practical interest. Fiber diameter has been found to vary according to species, breed and age (Joubert, 1956). There have been many studies in red meats to correlate fiber diameter and meat quality, and an interrelationship has been found among fiber diameter, sarcomere length and tenderness. Herring et al. (1967) working with bovine muscle observed that tenderness was linearly related to fiber diameter and curvilinearly with sarcomere length. It has long been known that there are two types of skeletal muscle fiber; the…