Prediction of lean meat proportion of lambs carcasses

Cadavez, Vasco

http://hdl.handle.net/10198/7558

Use this identifier to reference this record.

Name:	Description:	Size:	Format:
2009CadavezIBNA.pdf		116.85 KB	Adobe PDF	Download

Send Feedback

Authors

Cadavez, Vasco

Abstract(s)

The objectives of this study were to identify a reduced pertinent set of variables from an original data set of 18 carcass measurements in order to avoid redundancy and collinearity problems or to simplify data analysis and the development of the linear regression models to predict lean meat yield of lamb carcasses. Forty-six (46) male lambs, 26 of Churro Galego Bragançano Portuguese local breed and 20 of Sufolk c breed were used. Lambs were slaughtered and carcasses weighed approximately 30 min after in order to obtain hot carcass weight (HCW). After cooling at 4 o C for 24-h a set of seventeen carcass and tissues measurements were recorded. The data interrelationships were analysed following the common factor analysis procedure. HCW was lowly correlated with leg length (r = 0.17) and moderately correlated with measurements that characterize carcass lengths and perimeters (r = -0.39 to 0.56). Four common factors (factor I = HCW; factor II = breast bone tissue thickness; factor III = subcutaneous fat thickness; and factor IV = carcass conformation) were retained, account for 81.9% of the variation in the eighteen original variables. This study shows that common factors analysis can be used to condense the information given by large sets of variables, by selecting a reduced number of variables, which avoids collinearity problems and simplifies the development of carcass composition estimation models.