Predicting post-mortem meat quality in porcine longissimus lumborum using Raman, near infrared and fluorescence spectroscopy.

Spectroscopic techniques can provide valuable information about post-mortem meat quality. In the current study, Raman, NIR and fluorescence spectroscopy was used to analyze pH, drip loss and intramuscular fat in pork longissimus lumborum (n = 122) at 4-5 days post-mortem. Results were promising for partial least squares regression (PLSR) from Raman spectroscopy, giving coefficients of determination from cross validation (r) ranging from 0.49 to 0.73 for all attributes examined. Important regions in the PLSR models from Raman spectroscopy were attributed to changes in concentrations of post-mortem metabolites and modifications of protein secondary structure. Near infrared and fluorescence spectroscopy showed limited ability to analyze quality, with r ranging from 0.06 to 0.57 and 0.04 to 0.18, respectively. This study encourages further research on the subject of Raman spectroscopy as a technique for meat quality analysis.