Studies on Intramuscular Fat Percentage in Live Swine Using Real-time Ultrasound to Determine Pork Quality

In the modern pork industry, selection of high intramuscular fat (IMF) in pigs is necessary to improve pork quality. Ultrasound has been used previously to predict subcutaneous fat thickness and IMF in the longissimus muscles of line pigs and Real-time ultrasound has also been reported as a reliable method for estimating IMF in live pigs. So we estimate the correlation between meat quality traits and IMF percentage to investigate the possibility of utilizing real-time ultrasound technology for predicting IMF percentage in line pigs to improve pork quality. The genetic and phenotypic correlations for chemical intramuscular fat (CIMF) and ultrasound intramuscular fat (UIMF) were estimated to be 0.75 and 0.76, respectively. These results suggest that genetic factors strongly influence meat quality. The genetic and phenotypic correlation between UIMF and CIMF were 0.75, 0.76, respectively. The heritability of UIMF and CIMF were 0.48 and 0.50, respectively. So we concluded that CIMF can be replaced with UIMF and Ultrasound machines can be used to test IMF in live swine. In future, UIMF can be utilized to improve pork quality as an alternative to CIMF.