Carcass composition and sensory and chemical attributes of beef from local cattle breeds in North-West Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

This experiment quantifies the carcass composition and the sensory and chemical attributes of beef from four local cattle breed types in selected districts of North-West Amhara, Ethiopia. Forty matured intact bulls were fattened using two treatment feeds with Diet-1 (60:40), and Diet-2 (70:30) concentrate: roughage ratio of the daily dry matter intake of the animals. Carcass data was collected from the meat of 24 slaughtered animals through direct trait measurements, using panelists, and sample proximate analysis. The GLM of SAS (version 9.0) was used to analyze the data fitting breed and treatment feeds as fixed effects. The overall mean values of Total Leg (30.09±0.50), Total loin (12.19±0.39), Total rack (8.08±0.27), Total breast and shoulder (8.27±0.26), Total Shoulder and Neck (30.06±0.78) were significantly (P<0.05) affected by the breed type that cattle from Yilmana Desna area performed the best. Besides, meat quality traits of juiciness, tenderness, and overall acceptability (P<0.05), were best for Denbecha cattle breed types. The overall moisture content of the meat (69.78±0.32) was significantly (p<0.05) different between the breeds. Overall, the examined cattle breed types have acceptable sensory and chemical qualities of meat. Future research should quantify the sensory and chemical qualities of meat from these cattle breeds under different ages, animal physiology (intact and castrated bulls), sex, and dietary supplement levels.