## 3 Results and Discussion
### Muscle Position (MP)  
Specific meat cuts, such as those used for animal locomotion, could be more prone to superficial metmyoglobin accumulation during wet-aging, due to higher mitochondrial abundance and activity [32; 61; 62]. Since post-mortem muscle is not inert, mitochondria can continue to metabolize the remaining oxygen in vacuum-packaged meat for several weeks [63]. A critical point can be reached during wet-aging when oxygen concentration levels achieve values between 0.5 and 1%, which triggers a maximum metmyoglobin formation [34; 63]. Higher mitochondrial activity may also decrease oxygen availability to bind with myoglobin, which is a crucial step for imparting meat its bright red color [32; 64]. The observation of higher myoglobin contents associated to the two studied carcass positions suggested that a greater oxidative capacity might also result in discoloration problems [53]. Beef muscles primarily composed from oxidative rather than from glycolytic fibers tend to have higher levels of pro-oxidants, such as heme iron and phospholipids, that can lead to gray, greenish, or brownish muscles [65]. Since visual stimuli have a major impact on consumer's judgment of meat, muscles which are not red in color might be misinterpreted by consumers as lacking freshness and wholesomeness [7; 66]. SC muscles showed higher ultimate pH than SS, which was probably related to poorer color readings (\(L^{*}\), \(a^{*}\), \(b^{*}\), \(h_{ab}\), and C\({}^{*}\)), as shown in Table 5. Interestingly, higher pH values in the SC were not correlated neither with WBSF values nor with sensory hardness values, and it was shown that SC muscles were rated as softer muscles. This finding might be related to the increased release of catecholamines in the SS muscles, leading to potential adverse effects on meat texture [31]. Taste and odor values were also higher for SC than SS, and reaffirmed that in this case, these sensory traits were mostly unrelated to pH development in meat. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline  & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**TD**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**AW**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**MP**} \\ \hline _Def Quality Traits_ & **Short** & **Medium** & **Long** & **Light** & **Heavy** & **SC** & **SS** \\ \hline
**pH8** & \(5.56\pm 0.07\) b ** & \(5.69\pm 0.08\) a  & \(5.62\pm 0.11\) a  & \(5.63\pm 0.09\) c  & \(5.61\pm 0.09\) c  & \(5.70\pm 0.07\) & \(5.55\pm 0.07\) \\ \hline \(L^{*}\) & \(32.10\pm 1.16\) b  & \(33.98\pm 0.97\) a  & \(34.02\pm 0.98\) a  & \(33.28\pm 1.79\) & \(33.46\pm 1.64\) & \(32.87\pm 0.74\) & \(33.87\pm 1.65\) \\ \hline \(a^{*}\) & \(16.05\pm 0.79\) a  & \(15.66\pm 0.57\) a  & \(16.49\pm 1.34\) a  & \(16.06\pm 0.68\) & \(16.06\pm 0.70\) & \(15.61\pm 0.64\) & \(16.51\pm 1.11\) \\ \hline \(b^{*}\) & \(8.48\pm 2.93\) a  & \(4.19\pm 0.54\) b  & \(4.43\pm 0.89\) b  & \(6.79\pm 3.26\) & \(4.62\pm 2.91\) & \(5.21\pm 2.48\) & \(6.20\pm 2.74\) \\ \hline \(h_{ab}\) & \(23.51\pm 17.48\) a  & \(14.08\pm 7.09\) b  & \(14.06\pm 6.01\) b  & \(19.58\pm 12.93\) & \(15.82\pm 12.24\) & \(16.79\pm 12.67\) & \(18.54\pm 12.71\) \\ \hline \(C^{*}\) & \(18.43\pm 4.93\) a  & \(16.33\pm 3.24\) a  & \(17.04\pm 4.09\) a  & \(17.84\pm 4.52\) & \(17.03\pm 4.15\) & \(16.7\pm 3.38\) & \(18.18\pm 4.74\) \\ \hline
**WBSF (N)** & \(17.31\pm 0.41\) a  & \(19.31\pm 1.68\) a  & \(17.31\pm 0.52\) a  & \(18.47\pm 1.83\) & \(17.48\pm 1.52\) & \(17.77\pm 1.34\) & \(18.18\pm 1.44\) \\ \hline \multicolumn{2}{c}{_Sensory Analysis_} & & & & & \\ \hline
**Odor** & \(59.33\pm 4.48\) a  & \(57.10\pm 7.61\) a  & \(55.04\pm 1.68\) a  & \(58.16\pm 5.43\) & \(56.15\pm 4.69\) & \(58.78\pm 4.33\) & \(55.53\pm 6.01\) \\ \hline
**Taste** & \(58.20\pm 1.57\) a  & \(51.56\pm 4.09\) a  & \(60.84\pm 11.32\) a  & \(53.82\pm 4.14\) & \(59.92\pm 10.13\) & \(59.93\pm 9.46\) & \(53.80\pm 4.52\) \\ \hline
**Hardness** & \(51.63\pm 4.45\) a  & \(49.04\pm 7.36\) a  & \(48.06\pm 5.78\) a  & \(50.27\pm 5.59\) & \(48.88\pm 7.13\) & \(44.31\pm 3.38\) & \(54.84\pm 2.36\) \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}