Dep Marketing 1400 Independence Avenue, SW. 

Ag Service Washington, D.C. 20250-0254 

Use of the Longissimus Muscle to Predict Carcass Tenderness 

 

United States Agricultural STOP 0254– Room 2067-S 

artment of 

riculture 

Carol L. Lorenzen, Ph.D.

Methodologies, Testing & Verification Sub‐committee Leader

Visiting Professor Fellow

USDA‐AMS Livestock and Seed Program

Standards, Analysis and Technology Branch

Sub‐committee:

Keith Belk, Chris Calkins, Jerry Cannon, Michael Dikeman, Bucky Gwartney, Dwain Johnson, John Killefer, Virginia

Littlefield, Brian McFarlane, Brian Reuter, Steven Shackelford, Deb VanOverbeke, Tommy Wheeler,

Anne Rasor‐Wells, and Lora Wright

Background

Tenderness is measured by a number of objective and subjective procedures in research

settings:  Warner‐Bratzler shear force, slice shear force, star‐probe, trained sensory panels and

untrained consumer panels.  An understanding of the relationships among these procedures is

important for interpreting the data in the literature.

In general, there is a moderate to strong relationship among the measures of Warner‐Bratzler

shear force (WBSF), slice shear force (SSF), and sensory panel ratings in beef. Correlations

between WBSF and trained sensory panel overall tenderness ranged from ‐.18 to ‐.85 (Otremba

et al., 1999; Rhee et al., 2004).  Ortembra et al. (1999) reported higher correlations between

WBSF and the semitendinosus than for WBSF and longissimus where Rhee et al. (2004)

reported much higher correlations (‐.45 to ‐.85) for all 11 muscles studied.  Correlations

between WBSF and consumer panel tenderness ratings ranged from ‐.16 to ‐.72 (Lorenzen et

al., 2003; Destefanis et al., 2008).  Lorenzen et al. (2003) reported a correlation between WBSF

and longissimus consumer sensory rating of ‐.26 compared to the ‐.72 reported by Destefanis et

al. (2008).   

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The relationship between WBSF and SSF is well established.  Correlations between these two

methods of tenderness measurements range from .65 to .80 in beef (Shackelford et al., 1999).  

Reported correlations between SSF and trained sensory panels range from ‐.58 to ‐.76 in beef

longissimus (Shackelford et al., 1999; Wheeler et al., 2000a).  Shackelford et al. (2004) reported

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a correlation between SSF and trained sensory panel in pork longissimus to be ‐.72.   For both

beef and pork, SSF had higher correlations with trained sensory panel tenderness ratings than

WBSF (Shackelford et al., 1999; Shackelford et al., 2004).   A comparison of SSF to untrained or

consumer beef panel revealed a strong correlation of .92 (Wheeler et al., 2004).

Lonergan et al. (2001) investigated the relationship between the star‐probe attached to an

Instron Universal Testing Machine, WBSF, and trained sensory panel in pork.  They reported a

correlation of .68 between WBSF and star‐probe.  Additionally, there was a correlation of ‐.55

between WBSF and sensory panel and ‐.54 between star‐probe and sensory panel.  Two

additional studies investigated the relationship between star‐probe and sensory panel; Huff‐

Lonergan et al. (2002) and Lonergan et al. (2007) both reported a moderate correlation of ‐.54

between these two measures of tenderness.

There are several factors that affect tenderness, but four are considered the most important:  

postmortem proteolysis, intramuscular fat, connective tissue, and contractile state of the

muscle (Belew et al., 2003).  While no one procedure can accurately evaluate all of these

factors, WBSF, SSF and star‐probe seem to be moderately good indicators of human perception

of tenderness.

Comparison of Longissimus to Other Muscles in the Carcass

While many researchers have looked at multiple muscles, few have compared the muscles to

other muscles in the carcass.  Belew et al. (2003) compared the WBSF of 40 different beef

muscles.  This produced 800 muscle to muscle comparisons, 60% of which produced moderate

to high correlations (Belew et al., 2003).  Of the correlations reported, 166 ranged from .70 to

.99, 314 ranged from .50 and .69, and 173 ranged from .30 and .49 (Belew et al., 2003).  There

were 26 negative correlations in this data set (Belew et al., 2003) and 121 correlations were not

reported.  This indicates that some muscles might be better predictors of overall carcass

tenderness than others.  Simoes et al. (2005) compared nine muscles in an attempt to identify

one muscle as an indicator for the other muscles.  This study took an interesting approach to

identifying the indicator muscle; they had a combined mean of all the muscles and then looked

for the individual muscle that was not statistically different from the combined mean.  This

work pointed to the biceps femoris as the preferred indicator muscle (Simoes et al., 2005).

The longissimus muscle is the most studied muscle in meat science, and current grading

techniques in beef expose the longissimus muscle before fabrication.  From a practicality stand

point this makes the longissimus muscle the most desirable candidate for comparison with

other muscles.  Table 1 summarizes the relationship between the longissimus muscle and other
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muscles in the carcass across specie and measurement methods from published data sets.  The

correlations are made within the same aging time and a combination of quality grades unless

otherwise noted in the table.  While many of the correlations presented in Table 1 are highly

significant, they are all in the low to moderate range.  There is a tendency for the correlations

between the longissimus and muscles of the beef round to have higher magnitude correlations

than some of the other muscle groups.  Additionally, the relationships between the muscles in

beef do not seem to be the same in the other species, but there was only one data set for pork

used in this review.

Wheeler et al. (2000a) implemented a tenderness classification system to examine the

relationship between classifying the longissimus muscle and the tenderness of the gluteus

medius, semimebranosus, and biceps femoris using a trained sensory panel.  Data adapted

from that study is presented in Table 2.  Tenderness classification into tender, intermediate and

tough categories based on longissimus muscle slice shear force successfully sorted the

longissimus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris into the three categories.  The tenderness

classification system used sorted the tough gluteus medius muscles from the tender and

intermediate muscles.

Conclusion

There is a moderate and significant relationship between tenderness in the longissimus muscle

and other muscles in the carcass for beef.  Tenderness classification based on the longissimus

muscle can segment other muscles into those same classifications.  Muscles from a carcass

with a tender longissimus are more tender than their counterpart muscles in a carcass with a

tough longissimus muscle.  Because of current beef grading activities and practicality in an

industrial setting, the longissimus muscle is the logical muscle in which to predict tenderness of

a carcass.
Table 1: Comparison of correlations between longissimus muscle tenderness and other muscles1 of the carcass

Study Specie Measure2 AD BF GM IS PM QF RF SM SS ST Shackelfordet al., 1995

Beef WBSF  ‐  .43** .40** ‐.03 .12 .33*  ‐  .26 .42** .1

Wheeler etal., 2000a

Beef Sensory  ‐    ‐  ‐  ‐  ‐    ‐  ‐

  ‐  ‐  ‐  ‐    ‐  ‐

  ‐    ‐  ‐  ‐  ‐  ‐    ‐ 

  ‐ 

  ‐ 

  ‐    ‐   ‐    ‐ 

.43* .68** .58**

Wheeler etal., 2000a

Beef SSF to

Sensory

‐  ‐.41* ‐.31* ‐.47*

Wheeler etal., 2000b

Pork Sensory .17 .54** .3

Rhee et al.,

2004

Beef WBSF .05 .54** .53* ‐.02 .44* .43* .51** .56** .2

Rhee et al.,

2004

Beef Sensory .38* .55** .73*** .32 .54** .46** .51** .32 .3

Gruber et al.,

20063

Beef (Upper

2/3 Choice)

WBSF ‐.04 .26 .09 .19 .42* .37* .10 .2

Gruber et al.,

20063

Beef (Select) WBSF .02 .39* ‐.05 .07 .17 .30† .05 .1

1AD = adductor, BF = biceps femoris, GM = gluteus medius, IS = infraspinatus, PM = psoas major, QF = quadriceps femoris, SM = semimembranosis, S

semitendiosus, TB = triceps brachii

2WBSF = Warner‐Bratzler shear force, Sensory = trained sensory panel, SSF = slice shear force3Adapted from these data sets, correlations provided by authors

†P<0.10

*P < 0.05**P <0.01***P < 0.001

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Table 2:  Trained sensory descriptive attribute ratings for tendernessa (Mean + SEM) by tenderness class

and muscle with 14 d postmortem aging1

Tenderness classificationb Longissimus Gluteus medius Semimembranosus Biceps femoris

Tender 7.7 + 0.20c 6.8 + 0.18c 6.4 + 0.18c 5.9 + 0.16c

Intermediate 7.1 + 0.11d 6.5 + 0.10c 5.8 + 0.10cd 5.4 + 0.09d

Tough 6.3 + 0.27e 5.8 + 0.25d 5.1 + 0.25e 4.8 + 0.21e

Unsorted 7.1 + 0.09d 6.5 + 0.08e 5.8 + 0.08d 5.4 + 0.07d

1

Adapted from Wheeler et al., 2000a a

1 = extremely tough, 8 = extremely tender b

Based on 2 d postmortem longissimus slice shear force:  tender = < 26 kg, intermediate = 26 to 42 kg, tough = > 42

kg, and unsorted = all 98 samples

c,d,eMeans lacking a common superscript letter differ (P < 0.05)

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