Meat Quality and Rapid Evaporative Ionization Mass Spectrometry Measurements

The conversion of muscle to meat is a complex, multifactorial process. Color, pH, and shear force are commonly used to characterize lamb meat quality but are time consuming for online measurements during processing. Rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry (REIMS) can capture large amounts of metabolite data from meat in less than 10 s. In this pilot study, 5 muscles (semitendinosus, longissimus thoracis lumborum [LTL], infraspinatus [IS], supraspinatus [SS], and semimembranosus [SM]) from six ram lambs were aged for 7 d and analyzed using REIMS with multivariate data analysis. From 1797 features detected by REIMS, individual muscles were readily differentiated from each other, aside from LTL and SM. Despite the low number of animals, REIMS features in SS meat were associated with key meat quality parameters. These data support REIMS as a useful tool for rapid determination of meat quality and muscle type.