Research progress on factors affecting sheep meat quality.

As a source of high quality protein for human diet, mutton has become increasingly demanding for consumers. Meat quality, including color, flavor, tenderness, intramuscular fat content and other indicators, is affected by nutrition and genetics. Tenderness is the most important factor to perceive meat eating quality, and tenderness is mainly evaluated by shear force, mainly affected by intramuscular fat content and muscle fiber status. Flavor is also a factor affecting consumer acceptance, mainly related to the type and content of volatile compounds in meat. The paper summarizes the nutritional factors (feed type, feeding method, feed additive) and genetic factors (breed, age, gene) that affect the tenderness and flavor of sheep meat, with a view to providing reference for raising management and genetic breeding of sheep producing high-quality mutton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]