Xiaoyan Xu

Pork quality is multidimensional, but conventional evaluation methods are usually destructive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for rapid grading. In this study, longissimus dorsi samples from pigs weighing 30–150 kg were used to construct a composite quality index (CQI) from instrumental traits. Traits related to color, water-holding capacity, antioxidant capacity, and texture were measured, and 13 traits were retained after principal component analysis. The resulting CQI represents a dataset-dependent summary of instrumental quality traits rather than a validated measure of sensory eating quality. Hyperspectral images were collected from pork slices, and CQI was predicted using interval combination optimization (ICO) combined with extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). In the fixed spectral-level comparison, the SNV–ICO–XGBoost model achieved an R_p² of 0.8670, an RMSE_p of 1.7319, and an RPD_p of 2.7423. Animal-level mean-spectrum validation over 50 random splits showed that PLSR achieved the highest mean prediction performance, with an R_p² of 0.807 ± 0.058, an RMSE_p of 1.857 ± 0.345, and an RPD_p of 2.374 ± 0.345, providing a more conservative assessment of model performance. The predicted CQI values were further visualized qualitatively on the pork surface, supporting further evaluation of HSI for rapid and non-destructive assessment of instrumentally derived pork quality.

Faba bean-fed crispy tilapia represents a commercially valuable aquaculture product, renowned for its exceptional muscle firmness. However, the dynamic changes in muscle metabolite profiles during the tilapia crisping process remain largely unelucidated. In this study, proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H-NMR) combined with multivariate statistical analysis was employed to characterize and compare the muscle metabolomes of tilapia subjected to different crispness grades (CD0, CD2, CD4). A total of 11 differential metabolites were successfully identified, among which glycine, threonine, and trans-4-hydroxy-L-proline were demonstrated to be potential crispness-related biomarkers. Specifically, as the crispness grade increased from 0 to 4, the muscle contents of these key metabolites exhibited a consistent downward trend: glycine decreased significantly from 19.86 mM to 7.15 mM, threonine from 1.21 mM to 0.58 mM, and trans-4-hydroxy-L-proline from 2.25 mM to 0.89 mM. Subsequent metabolic pathway enrichment analysis further revealed that the glycine-serine-threonine metabolic pathway represented the most significantly perturbed pathway associated with the crisping process. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that faba bean-based feeding regimens enhance tilapia muscle crispness by orchestrating metabolite signatures involved in collagen biosynthesis and lipid metabolism. These results not only provide novel insights into the intrinsic molecular mechanisms underlying tilapia crisping but also establish a solid theoretical framework for the precise quality control and standardized production of high-quality crispy tilapia.

This study aimed to create a reduced‐salt version of Chaozhou beef meatballs (CBMs) by employing ultrasound treatment (0 and 30 min) combined with sodium bicarbonate (0%, 0.15%, and 0.3%). The ultrasound‐assisted sodium bicarbonate treatment significantly enhanced pH, salt‐soluble protein solubility (SSP), water‐holding capacity (WHC), and storage modulus (G′) of the CBMs (p < 0.05). Specifically, after treatment, the increase in pH value promoted the solubilization of SSP, with the content increasing from 28.23% to 56.53%. Moreover, the initial relaxation times (T₂₁ and T₂₂) were shortened, indicating a decrease in water mobility, as evidenced by an increase in WHC from 85% to 87%. Furthermore, the ultrasound treatment effectively facilitated protein unfolding, increased β‐sheet secondary structure content, augmented hydrogen and disulfide bond proportions, and resulted in a denser and more uniform gel structure. Consequently, the hardness of the CBMs was significantly improved (p < 0.05). Sensory evaluation revealed that the treated reduced‐salt CBMs were comparable to those produced by conventional methods. Therefore, combining sodium bicarbonate with ultrasound treatment is a viable approach to mitigate the negative effects of reduced salt content and produce high‐quality reduced‐salt CBMs.