In the present study, we have performed a GWAS of several meat-quality traits in an F2 resource population derived from a cross between a Chinese local breed (Beijing-You, highly regarded for its meat quality) and a commercial rapidly-growing broiler line (Cobb-Vantress) to identify candidate genes.
Meat color is an important feature for consumers since it reflects meat quality and freshness.
These breeds differ in growth, fat, meat quality, and other phenotypic traits.
Overall, information on the link between oxidative stress and meat quality is scarce and conflicting and, for cattle, there is no direct evidence that the genetic background has an influence on oxidative stress and meat characteristics [ 75].
Similarly to Duroc, the Basque breed shows high fat contents and high meat quality characteristics, and therefore, our findings provide further evidence of the potential association between ZNF24 and fat deposition and meat quality merit in pigs.
Whilst differences in meat quality between male and female cattle have been reported [ 46, 47], there are few that describe differences in genetic effects between sexes such as those seen in the current study.
For example, Cherel et al. [ 13] recently explored links between gene expression and meat quality traits in recently slaughtered pigs, and Kang et al. [ 12] characterised the developmental progression of gene expression patterns in the human brain.
These results provide valuable information about genetic mechanisms determining the phenotypic differences on growth and meat quality between the genetic types studied, mainly related to the development and function of the extracellular matrix and also to some metabolic processes as proteolysis and lipid metabolism.
In addition to the relationship between muscle mass and meat quality traits, we were also interested in certain parameters of the muscle and whole body metabolism such as muscle glycogen and lactate contents, blood glucose levels, and the carcass pH-values.
The association between the polymorphism and meat quality traits was also studied.
