Abstract:

Gender is one of the most important factor on growth and meat quality. Nine healthy Qinchuan cattles(three ones separately by gender, about three years old) were slaughtered to study the influence of gender on meat quality. Sampling at longissimus dorsi and the following items were measured, including content of water, crude ash, crude fat, crude protein, meat colour, cooking loss, tenderness, driage and water holding capacity. Results are shown as follows: content of water, crude ash and meat colour are not influenced significantly by gender（p﹥0.05）. Other items are different or significantly different among gender(P<0.05 or P<0.01).The tenderness of cow（2.15N）is the best, bull(3.41N) is better and ox(4.47N) is the worst of all; the cooking loss of cow（29.5％）is the biggest, ox（28.08％）is better and bull（26.13％）is the last; the water holding capacity of bull is the biggest, cow is the next and ox is the worst, which is opposite to driage; the crude protein of ox（25.86％）is the highest, bull（23.02％）is better and cow（21.90％）is the worst, crude fat is the opposite. Comprehensive analysis show that meat quality of bull is the best and ox is the worst of all.