Scientists from SRUC – Scotland’s Rural College – have teamed up with Morrisons to help find ways of improving the taste of UK lamb.
The project, which is part funded by the UK government’s technology board Innovate UK, will use CT scanning of live sheep and carcases and a trained human taste panel to find out what type of sheep are the tastiest.
It is hoped the development of a new breeding trait, also coined the ‘window of consumer acceptability’, will enable farmers to use genetic selection to select for higher taste and lower waste sheep.
David Evans from Morrisons said the project aimed to differentiate between wasteful fat, which lies under the sheep’s skin, and intramuscular fat (IMF) which is stored between the muscle fibres and linked to the meat’s taste.
“This project will improve lamb eating quality, through optimising the laying down of intramuscular fat and reducing the rest,” he said.
“Optimum IMF will improve taste and eating quality, while a reduction in the amount of carcase fat laid down will improve feed conversion efficiency, reduce the time it takes lambs to reach maturity and cut trimmed waste, for both butchers and consumers.”
Professor Lutz Bunger from SRUC said scientists would use CT scanning and Near Infrared spectroscopy (NIR) in innovative ways to assess the meat.
He said: “Thousands of vacuum packed cuts of lambs will be scanned using multi-object CT and automated image analysis to check several samples at once.
“NIR will be used to predict new genetic traits linked to meat quality that will be valuable information for sheep breeders. Both sets of results will be combined with more conventionally measured carcase traits routinely used in meat plants.”
According to Professor Bunger, the project will also enable UK sheep breeders to use EBVs in commercial cross-bred sheep for the first time ever.
He said: “About 70% of all UK slaughter lambs are cross-bred. This approach, which uses an analysis of an animal’s genetic make up to estimate its breeding value has previously only been available to inform selection decisions in purebred, pedigree flocks.”
Morrisons said it was hoped the technique, if successful, could be applied in other sectors such as pigs.