Development of a Hydraulic Based Meat Shear Force Testing Device and Prediction of Water Holding Capacity as an Indicator of Meat Quality

Meat quality is determined by tenderness and water holding capacity, which are important parameters in quality evaluation. This study aims to develop a meat shear force device to measure meat tenderness and to integrate a compression technique for predicting water-holding capacity (WHC) into a single device unit. The study employed an experimental method with a comparative device-testing approach, using chicken breast meat and beef thigh meat as test samples. Meat tenderness was measured using the Warner Bratzler Shear Force (WBS) as the reference instrument and a hydraulics-based Meat Shear Force (MSF) as the newly developed testing device. The observed variables included meat breaking force (tenderness) and wet area as indicators of water-holding capacity. The results showed that the breaking force values of chicken and beef measured using the MSF device were not statistically different (P > 0.05) from those obtained using the WBS device. In contrast, the wet area of beef measured using the hydraulic press method was significantly greater than that measured using the manual press method (P < 0.05). The shear force values of chicken meat measured using both the WBS and MSF methods were consistent, whereas for beef, the MSF tended to produce slightly higher shear force values with better precision than the WBS.